CDW Managed Cloud Services Reviews

With CDW Managed Cloud Services, at first, we just wanted to get a quick jump-start on an anticipated project for new technology, but then it morphed into more of a service where we could be apprised of issues before they happen. We like that.

Our environment is mostly EC2 with a couple of RDS instances and maybe an FSx.

They take things off of our plate, and we don't need to have as many experts on staff for more services that are rapidly expanding in the cloud offering.

CDW provides managed services to support our infrastructure solution. I consider it important because I don't really want to have to hire a full AWS person. Being able to leverage that takes quite a bit of pressure off of our staff, which is already stretched thin.

CDW Managed Cloud Services freed up staff in our organization to work on other responsibilities. We were able to stand up service in AWS much more quickly than if we didn't have that. It brought down the ramp-up time for projects that we didn't know were coming. We have a small footprint, and it has saved around 15 hours per month.

Their managed services team knows that something is wrong before we do, and they let us know. They apprise us so that we can make a decision on what needs to be done. It keeps uptime.

They enable us to deploy infrastructure services at our pace and not be limited by the availability of resources. That was a part of the reason why we engaged them in the first place. It keeps things more stable.

Their proactive alerting is valuable. They'll try and apprise us of issues before they become problems. I find that very valuable.

CDW listens to and understands our goals before designing and deploying a solution. We got someone pretty outstanding who has been working in cloud for more than 10 years. I like the holistic approach, both in terms of outright infrastructure, as well as the services offered underneath it, whether it was DCT, RBS, or any of the other things. We got expert-level advice. In terms of meeting the initial goals that we presented, they hit every metric with flying colors. They have met our expectations in terms of services delivered on time, on budget, and on spec.

CDW performs pretty well from a project management standpoint. We always get a dedicated project manager for any new situation, and they manage it from end to end.

They can maybe improve the scheduling. There have been times where I wanted to schedule something, and there was a conflict on their side as to who can do it and when and why, but other than that, they have been pretty stellar.

I have been using this service for about two years.

We do plan to increase its usage. It would probably expand into more regions and availability zones.

I would rate their customer support a nine out of 10.

We didn't use any other service previously. That was our first brand into the cloud aside from Microsoft.

From the time we entered into an agreement with CDW, we were able to start using their services in a matter of weeks.

There was a bit of initial setup that was required. It was pretty straightforward except for the VPN setup, which took about a week and a half. It was mostly firewall related, and we had two or three people involved. They were firewall and network engineers and general systems engineers. Currently, two or three people from engineering are engaged with CDW Managed Cloud Services.  

We have seen a return on our investment. They take care of a lot of things for us. Otherwise, we would need to ramp up on our organizational side to handle them.

I have made use of CDWs billing and budget advisor a little bit. I put a high value on that when it comes to the overall cost of CDW Managed Cloud Services.

In regards to the cost of CDW Cloud Managed Services, when I consider the costs of engineering resources that can work in multi-cloud environments, the cost of downtime, and the cost of the time to reconcile complex bills from cloud providers, the benefit is immeasurable. It can get pretty complex pretty quickly, and having that off our plate is definitely a benefit. 

It is a little more complex than I would like, but I think that's more AWS than CDW. CDW actually saves us money in regards to the way they handle things. We get support without a six-figure commitment from the AWS side, and that's appreciated.

We looked at a few. At the time, we were really looking for one thing, and that was getting up to speed quickly.

I would definitely advise others to give it a look, especially if you're not going to be spending six figures every month. It is well worth the value as well as the quality service.

CDW services haven't helped to improve our infrastructure performance, but they gave us capabilities that could be leveraged off the cloud. They gave us capabilities that aren't available with an on-premises equivalent.

We have used CDW’s free Recommendation Engine a number of times, which shows you how much money you can save by making simple changes to your cloud configuration. It has not affected our cloud costs much because the way our systems are set up, we can't move as quickly as I would like.

I would rate CDW Managed Cloud Services a nine out of 10.

We're an educational facility and CDW Managed Cloud Services has helped us create a remote lab platform where we can have students create and utilize multiple servers and networks, interconnect them, and perform their cybersecurity lab tasks in a virtual environment.

The number of individual student users will range from 10 all the way up to 60 at a time.

The biggest benefit is the cost-effectiveness of this service. For us to house and implement this type of environment on site, we would have to employ a number of additional people, as well as additional technologies, and that would cost us two to three times what it's costing us by implementing it in the cloud.

CDW Managed Cloud Services is providing us with an environment where we can outfit students with multiple PCs and servers to interconnect. We're creating a VMware-type environment in the cloud where the students have 24/7 access to practicing not only their labs, but also their theoretical knowledge, in a real-world environment. The environment, in general, is where students are actually trying to break the systems that are created. As a result, we'll typically know that they have done so, in many of the scenarios, well before CDW does, and we alert them so that they quickly get on it. But sometimes they catch it, alert us, and they take care of it.

I would like to see them improve when it comes to helping develop an interface to this environment that's more user-friendly. We're introducing people to the use of a type of cloud scenario that they're not familiar with. We have to train them on and teach them how it's implemented. Having a little bit better interface would be helpful.

We have been using CDW Managed Cloud Services for about three years.

There was the engineering design side and the support side. On the engineering design side, CDW Managed Cloud Services was on top of it. Our issues were more with AWS. We're a small player compared to corporations that are vying for their attention. So Amazon was more the challenge. The CDW Managed Cloud Services team was always in there trying to resolve things and get answers to the issues ASAP. On the CDW side, it was great. It was the Amazon people who were not responsive.

From the time we entered into an agreement to use the CDW Managed Cloud Services, it took about three or four months before we were able to start using the environment we needed. But we were the first institution that came to them asking for help in setting up this particular scenario. It was a totally new environment that had not been created yet. There were a few months of construction time until it was at the point that we could start utilizing it. But we created it from scratch.

There wasn't really any type of initial setup required at our end to use CDW Managed Cloud Services. There was engineering time on the CDW and AWS sides, to help engineer and design what we wanted. But outside of that, it was just an internet user interface.

We looked into several other service providers. Ours is a unique application. It's not just cloud services, but cloud services that can be adapted to educational purposes. Some of the providers we looked at were only geared towards doing educational services, but not cloud services in a cloud environment. And some were like Amazon. The biggest factor for us was cost, and at the time, CDW Managed Cloud Services was most efficient for what we needed.

Everything has been kept to what we planned on for budgeting. CDW Managed Cloud Services has met all the requirements there, and exceeded it in some cases. The biggest thing is that they're learning and we're learning. This is something that is new for all of us. This kind of approach hasn't been done before. But CDW Managed Cloud Services has been there with us, step-by-step, all the way, getting over any hurdle that we encounter.