From Reactive to Proactive: How Registrar Corp Reduced Monthly IT Costs by 50% and Unlocked Efficiency

“I will evangelize all day every day that NWN is the number one company to go to for managed service providers,” said Philip Edge, CTO of Registrar Corp.

Executive Summary

Following rapid growth in 2020, Registrar Corp, a compliance solutions provider, needed a managed service provider (MSP) capable of facilitating fast and secure data migration. The NWN team has since become a valued extension of Registrar Corp’s IT footprint, facilitating the migration of all email hosting services and data to AWS, implementing AWS Control Tower security protocols, and improving the incident management process. Registrar Corp’s IT department reduced spending by 50% within the first year of their partnership with NWN.

Customer

A leading FDA compliance solutions provider with 30,000+ clients and 200+ employees across 175 countries and 20 offices worldwide. Trusted by industry-leading customers like Walmart, Dollar Tree, and Dolce & Gabbana.

The Problem

Following rapid growth in 2020, Registrar Corp needed a scalable solution to migrate data from its legacy infrastructure, increase incident visibility, and manage access control securely. Above all else, as a compliance solutions provider, Registrar Corp needed an MSP that understood the importance of (1) security and (2) risk mitigation.

Challenges

• A third-party contractor with unreliable availability controlled the on-premise data hosting solution, cutting off data transparency and creating habitual performance and latency issues.
• The legacy email hosting platform included duplicative elastic block storage (EBS) data volumes, resulting in over 50 terabytes of costly and unnecessary backups.
• All internal users retained global admin access to critical data, which opened the door to unintentional yet potentially harmful access and even malicious tampering.
• Incidents and downtime occurred without system notification, oftentimes making customers the first responders to system errors.
• Two significant acquisitions during the migration period necessitated a comprehensive audit of existing systems and incoming software and hardware.

Our Solutions

• NWN approached Registrar Corp with a customer-first mindset, conducting a thorough assessment to determine how to achieve the company’s desired results in a tight six-month timeline. According to Edge, this collaborative mindset set NWN apart from other MSPs.
• “NWN welcomed me with open arms. They conducted deep dive assessments, found out which applications needed to be patched, which ones are outdated, and provided me the growth path,” said Edge.
• As the first order of business, NWN transferred ownership of on-premise data storage from the third-party contractor to AWS. During this process, the company suggested several areas for data optimization and provided superior visibility through 24/7 support.
• NWN facilitated the migration of email systems from a legacy provider to Microsoft 365, enabling superior security and data governance practices.
• Through the NWN Security Hub and AWS Control Tower, Registrar Corp migrated to a role-based access control (RBAC) system. Now, only authorized users maintain access to sensitive data.
• To date, NWN has facilitated secure data merge processes for multiple acquisitions. The NWN team also continuously audits all centralized data.
• Throughout their two-year relationship, NWN has collaborated with Registrar Corp to build a robust partnership exemplifying a mindset of “how,” not “if.” For example, NWN managed integration with another third-party application to facilitate Registrar Corp’s process of attaining International Organization for Standardization (ISO) compliance, a priority of Edge’s from day one.

The Results

• 50% reduction in IT spending during the first year.
• Migration of all M&A data to a secure, centralized server.
• Resource optimization, including the deletion of 10-20 unused Elasticsearch instances.
• Fast-tracking of ISO certification process.
• During the partnership’s first 12 months, NWN reduced Registrar Corp’s monthly IT spending by half, from $20K to $10K.
• Simultaneously, computational efficiency and data storage capacities have increased, and organizational data has been migrated to a more secure location. Data acquired during M&A processes has been successfully transferred to Registrar Corp as of 2024.
• Additionally, NWN identified 10-20 unused or underutilized Elasticsearch instances. By reducing this number, Registrar Corp optimized cost and resource efficiencies.
• The partnership has also enabled Registrar Corp to fast-track ISO certification. Edge anticipated the process to take approximately two years, but the Registrar Corp team is currently projected to receive certification in half that time.
• Aided by NWN’s steadfast partnership, Registrar Corp has transitioned from a reactive to a proactive incident management approach. Customers are no longer the first line of defense against downtime.
• “I would have never gotten there without NWN. One of the things I love about NWN is that I can open up a ticket seamlessly. I’ve got access to the innovation team day and night,” said Edge. “If there are incidents, I’m notified. But not only that, there’s proactive notification, right? It’s not always reactive.”