Right around 2002, Amazon had a problem: their app engineers didn’t have the necessary infrastructure and tools with which to build products without having to lose too much time talking to their networking engineers.
They got rid of the need for this constant back-and-forth by building a system that would let them build web-scale applications quickly. They then realized that with a little extra work, they could make it available to everybody and maybe make more than a pretty penny in the process.
That system soon grew to become Amazon Web Services (AWS), a massive, world-spanning global secure cloud services platform. As of 2015, AWS had data centers in 190 countries, each of which held anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000 computers.
Due to its sheer size and Amazon’s understandable secrecy, it’s hard to say exactly how many servers make up AWS. Estimates put it at anywhere around three to over five million total servers spread out all over the world — and it’s still growing.
Interestingly enough for the environmentally conscious, over 25% of that giant infrastructure uses renewable energies. Another fun fact: AWS completely dominates the cloud services landscape (its closest competitor, Microsoft Azure, is a far second) but apparently ⅔ of Americans have no idea exactly what it is.
Now, that gargantuan network is what WORKetc will be using to deliver our CRM project management services starting this year. We’re basically moving away from using our own equipment and instead leveraging the power of the world’s biggest cloud network. The end result? A huge spike in performance and reliability as well as much, much faster loading times.
What Does This Mean for WORKetc CRM Project Management Users?
The greater redundancy of delivering WORKetc data across several mutually-exclusive nodes instead of just one big hub also means users will experience far fewer potential network issues. Even if one of the servers crashes, WORKetc won’t go down since the data will be stored and retrieved from multiple machines on the cloud.
AWS will also let us deliver WORKetc from server locations that are geographically much closer to our users. Your data will also be housed in higher-specced equipment, meaning a there will be a significant reduction in loading times and an increase in overall performance. You get your data faster, so you get your work done even quicker than before.
We recently ran a closed beta for some WORKetc accounts in Australia and, as you can see in the table below, the loading times were essentially cut in half when using the Sydney AWS instead of our dedicated servers in Phoenix.
When Is This Happening?
If you’re in Australia, New Zealand, or Asia, then you’re already enjoying the CRM project management performance enhancements outlined above. We completed migrating accounts in those areas before Christmas 2016. We’ve also just completed migration on accounts in the US West Coast.
We now have a Europe AWS server setup and ready to receive our UK and Europe customers, with the migration to be completed before February 1st. We’ll then be wrapping up the migration for US East Coast customers by February 7th.
COMMENTS
Daniel,
We were one of the early ones to move in Australia, and the improvements have been phenomenal. The most noticeable has been in lookups and data entry for timesheets – a frustrating bug bear for our team previously – which means a big improvement in productivity.
And backups – they now take minutes instead of hours, literally.
Looking forward to the UX updates next!
Peter
I’m excited about this move. I know it was seemless for us. It just makes so much more sense. Keep up the good work
We’re Europe customers so happy with the news! Looking forward to these faster loading times. The increased reliability is off course also a plus. Thanks for the update!
Christophe – your account has been moved now… how is it?
I don’t have the numbers to prove it, but my impression is positive indeed!
We are also European Customers, so really looking forward to the improvements. Great work again Dan.
I’m in Australia, and I definitely notice the improvement. Things that I would normally sit around for a seconds are loading almost instantly. Let’s keep the improvements coming!
This is great news, Dan. I just tested my speed in Idaho by loading my contacts page with 250 per page. The page load was noticeably faster. Thanks!
I remember working for Qwest Communications in the early 2000’s and trying to convince company managers to move their data operations to Qwest Cybercenters (early cloud platforms). They’d look at you like you had a screw loose…especially the IT people. Today, people spend much of their day in the Cloud and don’t even know it. Haha.
Thanks again. We are excited about the performance improvement and added security of our data.
Thanks for the positive feedback – good to hear there have been noticeable improvements for people. I’ve been finding the AWS accounts quicker even when not local to them, and looking forward to seeing the impact on my own account once Europe is live!
Looking forward to the move. We have been on the system for so long we have a lot of data to get through sometimes. Anything that will make our access faster will be added to our ability to get more done. I also hope the new UI comes along soon after the transition is complete!