case study travis county
CASE STUDY TRAVIS COUNTY “On election day, our website traffic was 25 times that of a typical day. We were able to support that spike without problems or impact to our end users, thanks to DoubleHorn and AWS.” - Scott Flom, IT Division Manager, Travis County Clerk’s Office
About DoubleHorn uses AWS to give its customers scalability and enhanced security, helping local governments and other organizations scale their websites and other critical systems up or down based on demand. The company designs and implements a range of business communications and cloud services to small, mid-sized, and large organizations. DoubleHorn helps customers migrate to the AWS Cloud and is a member of the AWS Partner Network (APN).
Goals • Architect a cloud solution that gives Travis County scalable data storage • Prevent outages due to server performance when website traffic increases i.e. Election season • Improve monthly spend optimization • Optimize cloud management, load balance, ease of use using the BetterClouds platform
The Challenge As the company’s business grows, DoubleHorn increasingly needs to
help government agencies and organizations meet their scalability needs. “Many local government entities have public-facing websites that receive traffic bursts at certain peak times, and those agencies need to support that,” says Don Mackenzie, sales engineer for DoubleHorn. An example is the Travis County Clerk’s Office, which provides the official government website for publishing county, state, and federal election results data in Travis County, Texas. During the March 2016 national primary elections, the site experienced major performance degradation following a huge traffic increase. “We had a website outage due to server performance, because our on-premises web solution was overrun by the traffic spike,” says Scott Flom, IT division manager for the Travis County Clerk’s Office. “During that time, county residents couldn’t get election results or updates. We knew we couldn’t let that happen again.” DoubleHorn also helps customers like the Travis County Clerk’s Office address strict security requirements. The Travis County Clerk’s Office website displays information such as property, court, and other records. “Security is of paramount importance to government agencies,” says Mackenzie. “It’s critical that this information, along with election data, is protected.”
Why Amazon Web Services For several years, DoubleHorn has helped customers migrate websites and other systems to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. “We chose to become an AWS APN partner because AWS is innovative, offers an incredible range of services, and continuously delivers new technologies,” says Mackenzie. DoubleHorn participates in the AWS Public Sector Partner Program and is also an AWS Government Competency Partner. The program has propelled business forward for many of the organization’s clients.
Let us be your experts.
CASE STUDY TRAVIS COUNTY Why Amazon Web Services cont. Because it was interested in moving to the cloud to gain scalability and enhance security, the Travis County Clerk’s Office engaged DoubleHorn to re-engineer its website using AWS. “DoubleHorn offered a solid solution, and the elasticity and scalability of AWS was very attractive to us,” says Mackenzie. DoubleHorn holds the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) contracts in cloud assessment services, cloud broker services, cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and cloud software as a service (SaaS). Having a cloud services contract with DIR means public entities can do business directly with DoubleHorn without worrying about terms and conditions, SLAs, and other purchasing requirements, because those requirements have already been pre-negotiated with the State of Texas. DoubleHorn migrated the Travis County Clerk’s Office website to AWS, running on multiple Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. The solution also takes advantage of Auto Scaling, which automatically scales compute capacity for the site up or down based on traffic increases or decreases. Additionally, DoubleHorn deployed virtualized firewalls and advanced proxy techniques to help the Clerk’s Office meet its compliance requirements.
DoubleHorn completed the migration in under six weeks, easily meeting the Clerk’s Office deadline. “We were under a very tight timeline—we had to get the new architecture up and running before election day,” says Flom. “Because of DoubleHorn’s expertise, we were able to meet that goal. They did a great job of mitigating risks up front and then following through with a great implementation. We couldn’t have done this without their help.”
The Benefits By relying on the automatic scalability of AWS, the Travis County Clerk’s Office has the capacity required to easily support massive web traffic spikes during elections. The organization demonstrated its new capabilities during the November 2016 election. “On election day, our website traffic was 25 times that of a typical day,” says Flom. “We were able to support that spike without problems or impact to our end users, thanks to AWS and DoubleHorn.” The Travis County Clerk’s Office now has enhanced security, because DoubleHorn utilized AWS security best practices during the migration and implemented a powerful security solution that increased perimeter security. “We are very confident in our threat detection capabilities and overall security with this solution,” says Flom. The organization is also expecting to reduce operating costs by running its website in the cloud. “They will save a large amount of money by being on AWS,” says Mackenzie. “If they were using an on-premises solution or hosting the site internally, they would be paying for compute capacity all the time, without the ability to scale down and pay for what they use.” In addition, the Travis County Clerk’s Office can ensure the reliability of its website for the thousands of county residents who use it every day. “Because of the high availability and reliability of AWS, we can give our end users round-the-clock access to the information they’re looking for, when they need it—whether it’s election results or public records,” says Flom.
Let us be your experts.
CASE STUDY TRAVIS COUNTY The Benefits cont. Mackenzie believes that DoubleHorn will be able to repeat the success of the Travis County Clerk’s Office project with other government organizations. “Working with the Travis County Clerk’s Office, we clearly demonstrated that AWS is an excellent solution for counties needing dynamic, elastic capabilities for their critical systems. The Travis County Clerk’s Office saw that as well, and they are now considering moving additional systems to AWS in the near future.
Learn More Learn more about AWS Web Hosting
About DoubleHorn DoubleHorn provides cloud services brokerage and cloud solutions to public sector and private organizations and companies. Founded in 2005, the Texas-based company offers cloud solutions based on the AWS Cloud. It is a member of the AWS Partner Network.
Services Used • Amazon EC2 • Auto Scaling • BetterClouds
Contact Us DoubleHorn Corporate Office
Benefits of AWS • Helps customers quickly migrate websites to the AWS Cloud • Travis County Clerk’s Office can automatically scale its website to support 25x traffic spikes • Enhances security and increases availability and reliability for the Clerk’s Office
Let us be your experts.
1601 Rio Grande St. Suite 500 Austin, Texas 78701 512.637.5200 DoubleHorn.com [email protected]
About DoubleHorn uses AWS to give its customers scalability and enhanced security, helping local governments and other organizations scale their websites and other critical systems up or down based on demand. The company designs and implements a range of business communications and cloud services to small, mid-sized, and large organizations. DoubleHorn helps customers migrate to the AWS Cloud and is a member of the AWS Partner Network (APN).
Goals • Architect a cloud solution that gives Travis County scalable data storage • Prevent outages due to server performance when website traffic increases i.e. Election season • Improve monthly spend optimization • Optimize cloud management, load balance, ease of use using the BetterClouds platform
The Challenge As the company’s business grows, DoubleHorn increasingly needs to
help government agencies and organizations meet their scalability needs. “Many local government entities have public-facing websites that receive traffic bursts at certain peak times, and those agencies need to support that,” says Don Mackenzie, sales engineer for DoubleHorn. An example is the Travis County Clerk’s Office, which provides the official government website for publishing county, state, and federal election results data in Travis County, Texas. During the March 2016 national primary elections, the site experienced major performance degradation following a huge traffic increase. “We had a website outage due to server performance, because our on-premises web solution was overrun by the traffic spike,” says Scott Flom, IT division manager for the Travis County Clerk’s Office. “During that time, county residents couldn’t get election results or updates. We knew we couldn’t let that happen again.” DoubleHorn also helps customers like the Travis County Clerk’s Office address strict security requirements. The Travis County Clerk’s Office website displays information such as property, court, and other records. “Security is of paramount importance to government agencies,” says Mackenzie. “It’s critical that this information, along with election data, is protected.”
Why Amazon Web Services For several years, DoubleHorn has helped customers migrate websites and other systems to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. “We chose to become an AWS APN partner because AWS is innovative, offers an incredible range of services, and continuously delivers new technologies,” says Mackenzie. DoubleHorn participates in the AWS Public Sector Partner Program and is also an AWS Government Competency Partner. The program has propelled business forward for many of the organization’s clients.
Let us be your experts.
CASE STUDY TRAVIS COUNTY Why Amazon Web Services cont. Because it was interested in moving to the cloud to gain scalability and enhance security, the Travis County Clerk’s Office engaged DoubleHorn to re-engineer its website using AWS. “DoubleHorn offered a solid solution, and the elasticity and scalability of AWS was very attractive to us,” says Mackenzie. DoubleHorn holds the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) contracts in cloud assessment services, cloud broker services, cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and cloud software as a service (SaaS). Having a cloud services contract with DIR means public entities can do business directly with DoubleHorn without worrying about terms and conditions, SLAs, and other purchasing requirements, because those requirements have already been pre-negotiated with the State of Texas. DoubleHorn migrated the Travis County Clerk’s Office website to AWS, running on multiple Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. The solution also takes advantage of Auto Scaling, which automatically scales compute capacity for the site up or down based on traffic increases or decreases. Additionally, DoubleHorn deployed virtualized firewalls and advanced proxy techniques to help the Clerk’s Office meet its compliance requirements.
DoubleHorn completed the migration in under six weeks, easily meeting the Clerk’s Office deadline. “We were under a very tight timeline—we had to get the new architecture up and running before election day,” says Flom. “Because of DoubleHorn’s expertise, we were able to meet that goal. They did a great job of mitigating risks up front and then following through with a great implementation. We couldn’t have done this without their help.”
The Benefits By relying on the automatic scalability of AWS, the Travis County Clerk’s Office has the capacity required to easily support massive web traffic spikes during elections. The organization demonstrated its new capabilities during the November 2016 election. “On election day, our website traffic was 25 times that of a typical day,” says Flom. “We were able to support that spike without problems or impact to our end users, thanks to AWS and DoubleHorn.” The Travis County Clerk’s Office now has enhanced security, because DoubleHorn utilized AWS security best practices during the migration and implemented a powerful security solution that increased perimeter security. “We are very confident in our threat detection capabilities and overall security with this solution,” says Flom. The organization is also expecting to reduce operating costs by running its website in the cloud. “They will save a large amount of money by being on AWS,” says Mackenzie. “If they were using an on-premises solution or hosting the site internally, they would be paying for compute capacity all the time, without the ability to scale down and pay for what they use.” In addition, the Travis County Clerk’s Office can ensure the reliability of its website for the thousands of county residents who use it every day. “Because of the high availability and reliability of AWS, we can give our end users round-the-clock access to the information they’re looking for, when they need it—whether it’s election results or public records,” says Flom.
Let us be your experts.
CASE STUDY TRAVIS COUNTY The Benefits cont. Mackenzie believes that DoubleHorn will be able to repeat the success of the Travis County Clerk’s Office project with other government organizations. “Working with the Travis County Clerk’s Office, we clearly demonstrated that AWS is an excellent solution for counties needing dynamic, elastic capabilities for their critical systems. The Travis County Clerk’s Office saw that as well, and they are now considering moving additional systems to AWS in the near future.
Learn More Learn more about AWS Web Hosting
About DoubleHorn DoubleHorn provides cloud services brokerage and cloud solutions to public sector and private organizations and companies. Founded in 2005, the Texas-based company offers cloud solutions based on the AWS Cloud. It is a member of the AWS Partner Network.
Services Used • Amazon EC2 • Auto Scaling • BetterClouds
Contact Us DoubleHorn Corporate Office
Benefits of AWS • Helps customers quickly migrate websites to the AWS Cloud • Travis County Clerk’s Office can automatically scale its website to support 25x traffic spikes • Enhances security and increases availability and reliability for the Clerk’s Office
Let us be your experts.
1601 Rio Grande St. Suite 500 Austin, Texas 78701 512.637.5200 DoubleHorn.com [email protected]
