How a Property Manager’s Cloud Migration Cut Costs and Improved Performance
Gables Residential, owner of properties in 11 states, reaps the benefits of Microsoft Azure and handing over day-to-day IT tasks to CDW’s managed services.
When Gables Residential needed to modernize its data center equipment, the property management company’s IT team decided it was a smart time to move to the Microsoft Azure cloud. For the company, that’s akin to moving from a fixer-upper to a state-of-the-art, fully furnished dwelling. It was exciting — but also a bit scary.
As it began migrating its virtual machines to Azure, however, the Atlanta-based company with apartment buildings and retail spaces in 11 states had a vital partner in CDW, which has managed cloud transitions of all sizes since the dawn of the cloud era. Once the migration was complete, Gables hired CDW to manage and monitor the environment 24/7.
As a managed service provider, CDW maintains the cloud environment, updates operating systems with the latest upgrades and security patches, and troubleshoots when necessary. During worldwide IT outages, CDW’s engineering expertise has helped Gables Residential to recover quickly.
“CDW is phenomenal,” says Johnathan Kulow, the company’s senior IT manager. “With their knowledge and expertise, we don’t have to be the definitive source of information. We know we can rely on them to fill those knowledge gaps and help us get to where we want to go.”
On-Premises vs. the Cloud: Why Gables Residential Chose Azure
Before the migration, Gables Residential’s aging server and storage hardware had reached its end of life, and its applications were running on virtual machines on legacy operating systems that needed to be upgraded.
The company operated two data centers in Georgia and managed servers in each of its locations across the country. But with maintenance and support contracts for hardware ending and the contract for a colocation facility up for renewal, Gables had to decide whether to upgrade hardware and renew with the colocation facility or migrate to the cloud. Its IT staff reached out to CDW for advice.
“CDW has been our partner for a long time, so we try to leverage the relationship as much as possible,” Kulow says. “We’ve built up a lot of trust over the years and rely on their expertise quite a bit.”
CDW Executive Account Manager Bill Hicks and a team of solution architects walked Gables through its options, which included a hybrid cloud approach. But CDW recommended that the company go fully cloud because it was the most cost-effective choice.
Gables’ IT leaders agreed and chose Microsoft Azure because, as longtime Microsoft customers, they have expertise in its software.
At the time, the company had already moved its mission-critical applications — including property management, HR and financial software — from its on-premises systems to Software as a Service providers. So, migrating the company’s remaining workloads to the cloud made sense, says John Garner, senior director of IT operations and security for Gables Residential.
“We had already started to embrace the cloud with SaaS products, so that influenced the push to Azure,” Garner says.
Gables hired CDW to assist with planning and migration. CDW’s strategy: a lift-and-shift of virtual machines and data to Azure as soon as possible to get off the legacy equipment and out of the colocation facility, Hicks says. Once migrated, CDW would consolidate VMs and update to the latest server OS, then fine-tune and rightsize the cloud implementation to reduce costs.
“The timeline was sped up because we had to get out of the colocation facility,” Hicks says. “We knew a lift-and-shift was not perfect and we would need to spin up additional resources on Azure, but we also knew that we’d clean it up once we got there.”
56%
The percentage of enterprises that use managed service providers for their public cloud environments
Source: Flexera, 2024 State of the Cloud Report, March 2024
“When we hit roadblocks or gaps in knowledge, we can reach out to CDW to get us over the line.”
— Johnathan Kulow, Senior IT Manager, Gables Residential
Migrating to Azure and Optimizing the Cloud Environment
The four-month migration to Azure went smoothly, with CDW and the Gables IT staff working hand in hand. Once CDW assessed the amount of cloud resources needed, its engineers built a landing zone on Azure, put in place a redundant network structure, and then replicated 54 VMs and data to Azure using Azure Site Recovery, says Brian Thiess, CDW’s Azure technical account manager.
The cutover went off without a hitch. “Our maintenance windows are on Tuesdays,” Kulow says. “We flipped a switch here and flipped the other switch there, and we were good Wednesday morning.”
After the migration was completed in the spring of 2022, Gables engaged CDW to manage its Azure cloud environment and provide 24/7 support. CDW engineers, led by Thiess, immediately went to work to fine-tune the cloud environment.
They rebuilt and refactored VMs to run on the latest operating system. They also decommissioned VMs that were no longer needed and were able to consolidate some applications into fewer VMs because Azure’s compute resources are more powerful than Gables’ legacy IT equipment, Thiess says.
CDW monitored usage and rightsized server and storage resources for each VM and moved archival data to lower-cost storage. To further reduce costs, Gables purchased reserved instances, which is more cost-efficient than pay-as-you-go pricing.
CDW’s MSP Monitors Gables Residential’s Cloud Workloads
CDW’s managed service provider team spent about a year and a half completing the optimization work, with the Gables IT staff assisting. Now, the MSP staff performs day-to-day monitoring of the Gables cloud environment. The company continues to partner with CDW on other security, networking and cloud infrastructure projects.
To ensure uptime and reliability, Gables leverages CDW’s redundant cloud infrastructure and MSP staff to quickly restore systems if an outage occurs, Thiess says.
Gables’ IT department views CDW’s managed services team as an extension of its own staff. They hold weekly meetings. In fact, Garner says, he appreciates that CDW is proactive and reaches out if issues arise.
For example, if CDW gets an alert through its monitoring software that a VM has a spike in CPU usage or high network traffic, its engineers investigate and resolve the issue.
“If we can determine that it’s a prolonged utilization, we would scale the resource, but if it’s something we can remediate through configuration changes within the OS or application, we will address it that way instead of just throwing money at it to increase resources,” Thiess says.
“CDW is always there for us. When we have a new project, they continue to show their value as a true trusted partner.”
— John Garner, Senior Director of IT Operations and Security, Gables Residential
CDW’s Rapid Response
The Gables IT department likes to take a hands-on approach and learn by doing, so its staff partnered with the CDW MSP team on the optimization work every step of the way. In fact, Kulow and Gables Systems Engineer Steven Schabas took the lead on eliminating the last on-premises legacy systems, shifting them to Azure in early 2024.
When Gables pursues these projects, Kulow finds comfort knowing that CDW’s managed service staff is available to assist if needed. “When we hit roadblocks or gaps in knowledge, we can reach out to CDW to get us over the line,” he says.
Overall, the Gables Residential IT department is happy with the Azure implementation. It not only allows the company to control costs and simplify and centralize management, but it also has improved reliability and security and is helping the company to modernize and innovate in the cloud, Garner says.
For example, Gables wants to build a cloud-native data warehouse, such as Microsoft Fabric or Snowflake on Azure, to bolster its data analytics efforts.
In the meantime, the company’s business leaders use Microsoft solutions to run analytics reports. This is much easier in the cloud because the existing systems in Azure can more seamlessly access customer data from other cloud environments, Garner says.
“That’s the power of moving to the cloud,” he says.
As for CDW, Gables Residential has relied on the tech solutions provider for everything from networking equipment and desktop and laptop computers to cybersecurity solutions. The Azure project has further solidified that relationship, Garner says.
“CDW is always there for us. When we have a new project, they continue to show their value as a true trusted partner,” he says.
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