Hashstacs is a Singapore-based Blockchain development firm focusing on the digital transformation of the financial industry. Its flagship product, the Securities Trading Asset Clearing and Settlement (STACS) Network is a blockchain built specifically for Finance.
As its business and its customers’ operations grew, Hashstacs was concerned about whether their servers could handle the increased load. It wanted to ensure that its platform was stable and could scale to meet market demands. As Hashstacs is in the FinTech industry, security and compliance was paramount given the strict regulations in place. It previous server monitoring systems would only alert the operations team of issues, such as sudden loan increases or stalled server queues. The operations team had to manually resolve them when notified – meaning they had to be on standby around the clock to respond to potential disruptions. Given the fierce competition for talent in Singapore, it was challenging for Hashstacs to hire people with the right skill sets to manage the IT infrastructure operations round the clock.
To offload its infrastructure management tasks, Hashstacs subscribed to AWS Managed Services (AMS) through Cloud Comrade, which operates AMS on its behalf, facilitating access to AMS and its enterprise-grade service. Cloud Comrade worked closely with Hashstacs to identify their pain points and needs, before coming up with a comprehensive plan. Cloud Comrade helped Hashstacs create a highly secure cloud computing environment, that is agile and scalable to meet the rapidly-evolving needs of the organisation as it digitally transforms. This enabled Hashstacs to reduce operational overheads and risks, with common infrastructure activities (such as monitoring, patch management, security, and backup services) now automated. Cloud Comrade also provides full-lifecycle AMS services to provision, run, and support Hashstacs’ IT infrastructure, helping Hashstacs lower operational costs , expedite product development timeframe and improve its operational efficiency.
AMS by Cloud Comrade also enabled Hashstacs to address its manpower shortage in a few areas. AMS features out-of-the-box compliance helped Hashstacs easily meet compliance requirements, freeing the in-house team to focus on their core business. Hashstacs can also tap into 24×7 global coverage of AWS expertise with tier 1 response and remediation. In addition to well-architected reviews, configuration rule checks, risk prevention, and management – AMS also monitors services 24x7x365 with proactive alarms and a complete incident management lifecycle from response to resolution. This allows Hashstacs to focus their limited talent pool on strategic business areas.
Benefits
As an AWS Financial Services Competency Partner and with its deep expertise and experience across ASEAN, Cloud Comrade is well-positioned to help FinTech companies leverage the cloud to drive hypergrowth in business and innovation – while catering to the unique needs of Asia’s financial services sector. Cloud Comrade supported Hashtacs’ move to AMS through a detailed assessment to understand its infrastructure setup, workflows, and operational processes. The information gathered was then translated into a technical design document to facilitate the move.
Given the volume and sensitivity of the data it manages, Hashtacs recognizes the benefit of having enterprise-grade compliance and security. With AMS, which comes equipped with out-of-box governance, security, and compliance features, Hashstacs easily meet various compliance program requirements. Cloud Comrade’s Financial Services security and compliance experts also helped Hashtacs to create scalable, secure cloud platforms that were specially designed to complement the organization’s security goals, strategies, and tactics, while meeting the strictest regulatory requirements.
Cloud Comrade enabled Hashstacs to accelerate innovation with AMS in place, so that Hashstacs can focus on key business objectives without having to worry about the operational capability and security of their IT infrastructure. This frees up Hashstacs engineers to focus on innovative development work rather than on cost optimisation, making Hashstacs to stand out in the competitive market for talent.
Hashstacs has 24/7 access to AWS Enterprise Support, with AWS Certified Solutions Architects dedicated to deploying and optimizing its infrastructure. The depth of these architects’ knowledge across industries and markets has proven invaluable for a company with ambitious growth plans such as Hashstacs. Regular cost optimization sessions with Cloud Comrade and AWS Certified Solutions Architects enabled Hashstacs to reduce its infrastructure costs. Cloud Comrade also delivered additional savings for Hashstacs by helping them to right-size compute and database instances to match actual workloads and utilise more Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2) Reserved Instances.
