Executive Summary
Hershfield Insurance Agency is a family owned insurance brokerage firm that specializes in personal insurance with competitive rates and is always looking out for their customers’ best interests.
About the Customer
Hershfield Insurance sells insurances policies nationwide and operates with about ten staff, from the sales team to customer service to the marketing team.
Customer Challenge
Hershfield had a local office with local computers and a local server to run their insurance applications as well as customer management systems. They were looking to cut costs and gain the flexibility to work anywhere and not be so dependent on their local office to access their infrastructure remotely. They wanted a solution that would not be impacted by local power outages or internet interruptions as well as maintaining the ability to downsize their local office space.
Why AWS?
AWS has a global infrastructure that provides IT resources on demand and allows customers to scale globally fast. AWS offers a financial strategy to pay-as-you-go which provided Hershfield Insurance more agility, reliability, and flexibility, all while using the latest technologies that align with the company’s needs.
Why Broad PC was chosen as their AWS Partner
Broad PC is an AWS APN Consulting partner that has deep customer facing experience and has the skills to translate client requirements into business direction via the use of technology. The Broad PC team facilitated the project by understanding Hershfield Insurance needs as well as any current systems limitations.
Technical Health Check Assessments were performed by Broad PC expert-certified professionals and led by our project managers. The THCA allowed us to identify key improvement areas for Hershfield Insurance to reduce and eliminate IT limitations and to allow Hershfield Insurance to be able to work from anywhere with the flexibility they need while being cost effective.
Partner Solution
Broad PC leveraged AWS global infrastructure to design a solution that was globally scalable with lowest administrative overhead. The solution was based on Microsoft Workloads, comprised of:
Microsoft Active Directory
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft DNS Domain Name Service
Microsoft File Share storage Service
We integrated those solutions using AWS services such as EC2, EBS, S3, VPC, Security Groups, AD Connector, AWS WorkSpaces, and AWS Managed VPN, among others.
Results and Benefits
By using AWS global infrastructure, Hershfield Insurance was able to gain newer and reliable infrastructure for their current system by taking advantage of the reliability and security that AWS global infrastructure has to offer without any limitations to grow their business. Right after AWS was implemented, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and Hershfield was fully prepared to have all of its employees work from home using AWS WorkSpaces with their applications connected to the AWS EC2 servers. Staff morale and sales were great (despite the unfortunate external situation) and the customer was extremely pleased with the benefits of having migrated all of their workloads to AWS.
Next Steps
Hershfield Insurance is very happy with Broad PC’s consulting services and they have since looked to Broad PC for any other technology need.