SIGNiX

SIGNiX is one of the leading providers of digital signature and eNotary technology in North America. The company’s patented SIGNiX digital signature platform, which lets customers apply digital signatures on any device, had been running on Windows servers in a data center owned and managed by a third-party managed service provider (MSP) for over a decade. But, in 2019, SIGNiX knew it was time to make a change.

“Several significant problems with our existing MSP began to pop up,” said John Harris, chief technology officer at SIGNiX. “First, their lack of flexibility hindered our progress. Any time we wanted to change a server or roll out a new service, we had to sign a long-term contract. Additionally, the MSP’s level of service began to decrease drastically—to the point where they would make unannounced changes that impacted our system availability.”

Harris continued: “We knew a move to the public cloud would not only give us the flexibility we needed but also benefit us from a cost, scalability and innovation standpoint.”

Harris and his team took initial steps toward the cloud in 2016 by migrating their test environment to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The long-term goal was to migrate the production environment over and terminate the relationship with their data center MSP. But first, Harris needed a trusted partner with cloud expertise to help guide and ensure a seamless migration. In late 2019, SIGNiX started interviewing MSPs to support the migration of its SIGNiX digital signature platform, which was running on a Microsoft SQL Server database and Microsoft Windows Server operating system (O/S).

SIGNiX brought in a new MSP, but it wasn’t long before issues arose again. “After months of working with the MSP and getting no closer to our goal, we decided to part ways with them. Fortunately for us, around the same time, we realized we already had an established and successful relationship with the right partner: Navisite,” said Harris.

Navisite had been providing managed DBA services for SIGNiX’s database servers. Harris was extremely happy with Navisite, and it was during a routine conversation with the team that he learned Navisite offered a much broader portfolio of cloud migration and managed services that could support the company’s goals.

Navisite officially came on board in 2021 to help guide and support the migration of SIGNiX’s digital signature platform to AWS. Navisite kicked off the project by assessing the company’s existing architecture and taking the time to understand the team’s unique IT and business requirements. From there, the Navisite team designed and architected a new environment on AWS that would set SIGNiX up for success.

“Very quickly, we could see that the level of expertise Navisite brought to the table was much more powerful than what we’d had with our previous provider,” said Harris. “Our client base demands 24×7 uptime on our digital signature platform to handle thousands of highly secure and compliant digital signatures daily. Navisite helped us maintain our business-critical operations by paving the way for a smooth and successful migration.”

With the architecture designed, SIGNiX, with the support of Navisite, executed the migration to AWS. Harris commented: “For the final migration cutover, we planned for a three-day outage, but we were up and running on AWS within 17 hours. Everything went according to plan, and we couldn’t have done it so seamlessly without the support of Navisite.”

Harris noted that throughout the project Navisite acted as an extension of his team, often collaborating with a continuous exchange of ideas. Ultimately, the partnership’s success enabled Harris’ team to stay focused on keeping their digital platform up and running without worrying about building out the new cloud environment.

Since moving to AWS, Harris said SIGNiX has saved approximately 50% in costs, much of which is due to lower costs associated with AWS cloud infrastructure, including networking, security, and especially storage. Harris also noted that where costs may have been the same, he’s gained far more value from the investment.

“On AWS, we’re getting much better ROI—not only in terms of cost savings but also the capabilities to continually innovate and meet customer demand,” Harris said. “When operating at our old data center, even if we shut down a server, we still had to pay the MSP. On AWS, we only have to pay for what we use—and that’s the ultimate flexibility.”

Now that the SIGNiX digital signature platform is live on AWS, Harris and his team are taking advantage of Navisite’s AWS Cloud Optimization Service to gain real-time views into their AWS environment and work with Navisite’s experts to further optimize and reduce costs.

Additionally, Navisite manages the underlying cloud infrastructure for SIGNiX, including monitoring and maintaining all compute, storage, database, networking and operating system resources and ongoing security management and patching.

“Navisite has proven to be a trusted partner that continues to meet our expectations at every turn,” said Harris. “We look forward to building on our relationship well into the future.”