F. Schumacher & Co. Reduces Azure Spend by 23% with Cost Optimization from Velosio

Background

F. Schumacher & Co. is a privately held textile company based in New York City and Fort Mill, South Carolina. Schumacher primarily designs and manufactures fabrics, wall covering, trimming, floor covering, finished goods and paint for the interior design industry in the United States. Established in 1889 by Frederic Schumacher, F. Schumacher & Co. is a fifth-generation business and the only supplier of decorative textiles from the 19th century still privately owned and managed by direct descendants of its founder. Schumacher currently operates under five brands: Schumacher, Patterson Flynn Martin, Backdrop, Freddie, and Frederic. The company currently maintains 18 showrooms in several countries.

Schumacher was hosting its Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP and additional systems in the Microsoft Azure cloud, and the footprint grew beyond their control, resulting in unused storage components and virtual machines. “As our business has evolved, so has our Microsoft Azure footprint,” says Brandon Koupal, Director of Enterprise Systems at F. Schumacher & Co. “We were at a point where we were spending about a half million dollars on cloud services within Azure – and for an organization our size, it just didn’t make sense,” continues Koupal. He was a new employee at the time and inherited the jumbled-up mess. “It’s challenging because it’s almost like diffusing a nuclear bomb, without any instructions or guidance – the last thing you want it is to have it explode on you,” says Koupal.

Schumacher was unhappy with their systems provider and asked Velosio to step in and help. “When it comes to IT infrastructure, it was very important that we partner with a cloud services provider who could walk us through all the nuances of Azure,” says Koupal. “It’s really important to have those experts at your disposal, especially when you’re trying to take on such a large effort. The value proposition that Velosio has is that they can provide a whole suite of services for us. They can be our GP partner as well as our cloud services provider and help us with anything Microsoft related. This is what differentiates Velosio from their competitors,” continues Koupal.

Cost Optimization

Velosio performed an Azure cost optimization review, making recommendations for cost reduction, as well as performance, security, and efficiency. If the recommendations were to be implemented, Schumacher could save 23% annually. “The cost optimization recommendations that Velosio gave us were very insightful because they were able to pull down reporting from Azure that I didn’t know existed and really highlight everything that needed to be done,” comments Koupal.

The recommendations were presented in order of importance in terms of security and business critical risk. “Velosio itemized everything in a punch list of things that needed to be addressed, and they were able to quantify each one of those line items, which is huge,” says Koupal. “We were then able to pull in the right resources and tackle this project,” continues Koupal. By being proactive, Schumacher could also avoid potential security risk. “Identifying security issues that we did not know were out there, was another key aspect of the cost optimization recommendations that really can’t be quantified unless you have a security incident, which luckily we were able to avoid,” says Koupal.

Velosio assisted the Shumacher team in executing the recommendations. “Velosio really held our hand as we started to look at some of these items that we weren’t overly familiar with how to execute,” says Koupal. “It wasn’t just, ‘here’s a whole bunch of recommendations, good luck – figure it out on your own.’ They extended their helping hand and said they would help if we needed anything, and since we are a managed care client with Velosio, we took full advantage. There’s a lot of value in the service that they provide,” continues Koupal.

Power BI

In the past, Schumacher employees were using SQL Management Studio for data visualization, and Koupal knew that there was a better way. He considered Tableau and Power BI, and Power BI was the less expensive, more user-friendly option. “With Power BI, we create data pipelines, publish them to Power BI and then let the analysts consume the reporting from there or create their own data sets from the data that we publish,” explains Koupal. Velosio assisted Shumacher with end user training for Power BI.

Benefits

Schumacher has experienced a 23% decrease in Azure subscription spend, and a 56% decrease in total annual spend. “The proof is in the pudding,” says Koupal. “We now spend about $220,000 a year, down from $500,000. At Velosio, there’s great accountability at the leadership level. I can tell that the directors within each department genuinely care and are committed not just to Velosio, but to me as a customer, and they’re willing to spend the extra time needed to thoroughly explain things. I’m very impressed with the leadership at Velosio. Marty, especially, is fantastic. Carolyn is fantastic. I’ve worked with her a lot and she has a tremendous amount of patience, which makes a big difference. Their professional demeanor is fantastic, and I really feel like they’re not a vendor but that they’re more so like a partner, someone that I can reach out to with any questions, and they will spend the time needed to walk me through it,” continues Koupal. Moving forward, Schumacher has set budget alerts so that monthly spend will not reach beyond certain budget thresholds without notification.