About the customer

PE Energy is a prominent energy solutions provider that offers a comprehensive range of products and services to the energy industry. As a fundamental aspect of their business operations, PE Energy relies on Sage X3, a robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, to efficiently manage critical business processes.

The Challenge

PE Energy experienced certain challenges in deploying and managing their Sage X3 software. They needed a scalable, reliable, and secure infrastructure to run Sage X3 and ensure seamless access for their employees across different locations. Additionally, they required a cost-effective solution that would optimize their IT spend while maintaining high performance.

The Solution

Cecure Intelligence, in collaboration with PE Energy, designed and implemented an AWS-native infrastructure leveraging Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to host the Sage X3 software. The team identified the following components as part of the solution:

Amazon EC2 Instances:Based on the specific requirements of Sage X3, Cecure Intelligence provisioned EC2 instances optimized for compute and memory, ensuring optimal performance.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): To enhance security, a custom VPC was set up to isolate the EC2 instances from the public internet and other resources, providing a private and secure environment.

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB): To achieve high availability and fault tolerance, an Elastic Load Balancer was implemented to distribute incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances, ensuring the application remains accessible even if some instances experience issues.

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM): IAM was implemented to control access to AWS resources, granting appropriate permissions to different user roles within the organization.

Amazon CloudWatch: CloudWatch was set up to monitor the performance and health of the EC2 instances and other AWS resources. This proactive monitoring allowed for timely responses to potential issues. The CIL team also configured CloudWatch Alarms, Dashboards, and Logs to provide actionable insights and enabled PE Energy's IT team to effectively manage and optimize their infrastructure.

Detailed Use of AWS Services

CloudWatch Implementation and Insights: The EC2 We configured CloudWatch to provide detailed monitoring and observability for PE Energy's Sage X3 environment. Custom dashboards were created to visualize key metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, disk I/O, and network traffic. CloudWatch Alarms were set up to notify the IT team of any performance issues or anomalies, enabling them to take swift corrective actions. Additionally, we used CloudWatch Logs to collect and analyze log data from the EC2 instances, providing deeper insights into application behavior and troubleshooting. We trained PE Energy's IT team on how to leverage CloudWatch Insights for querying and analyzing log data, which improved their ability to diagnose and resolve issues quickly. This comprehensive observability strategy ensured that PE Energy could maintain high availability and performance for their Sage X3 deployment.

AWS Backup and Security: We provisioned AWS Backup to automate the backup of EBS volumes with daily backups and a 3-month retention cycle. We also enabled security services such as SecurityHub, GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, AWS Config, and AWS WAF to enhance the security posture of the infrastructure. AWS Key Management Service (KMS) was used for encryption to protect sensitive data.

Systems Manager: AWS Systems Manager was utilized for scheduled scanning and installation of necessary patches, ensuring the infrastructure remains up-to-date and secure.

CloudFormation: The entire infrastructure was deployed using AWS CloudFormation, ensuring a consistent and repeatable deployment process.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Analysis

We conducted a TCO analysis to highlight the cost benefits of migrating PE Energy's Sage X3 infrastructure to AWS. The analysis considered specific resource requirements, including the number of EC2 instances, storage volumes, and database instance types. By right-sizing the resources and leveraging AWS Reserved Instances, we estimated potential cost savings of up to 30% compared to their previous on-premises infrastructure.

The cost model we provided outlined expected monthly costs for EC2 instances, RDS databases, S3 storage, and other relevant AWS services. It also factored in data backup costs using AWS Backup with a 3-month retention period. The analysis emphasized the business value of using AWS, including faster deployment times, scalability to handle peak demands, and enhanced security through AWS services.

The Result

With the AWS EC2-based infrastructure, PE Energy experienced significant improvements in their Sage X3 deployment and management. The benefits included:

Scalability: The EC2 instances provided the flexibility to easily scale resources up or down based on demand, ensuring optimal performance during peak periods while minimizing costs during low-traffic times.

Reliability: The setup of multiple EC2 instances behind the load balancer contributed to high availability and redundancy, reducing the risk of application downtime.

Security: The use of VPC and IAM ensured a secure environment for Sage X3, protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access.

Cost Optimization: By leveraging EC2's pay-as-you-go pricing model and optimizing the instance types, PE Energy could efficiently manage their IT spend, paying only for the resources they used.