2nd Watch Helps Covanta Grow Waste-to-Energy Business with AWS

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - May 4, 2017) - 2nd Watch, a provider of managed cloud and cloud migration services for Amazon Web Services (AWS) users, announces a large migration project with Covanta, a provider of sustainable waste and energy solutions. By Summer 2017, 2nd Watch, in collaboration with AWS Professional Services, will have migrated more than 400 servers and 43 business applications from Covanta's internal datacenter to AWS. The implementation is part of a long-term initiative to outsource Covanta's IT infrastructure to the cloud, supporting smooth onboarding of acquired companies and lowering operating expenses.

Every year, Covanta's facilities safely convert approximately 20 million tons of waste into clean, renewable electricity to power one million homes and recycle approximately 500,000 tons of metal. The company, which has 45 facilities worldwide, has grown aggressively through acquisition since 2010. Growth, however, has resulted in strains on the IT department and hampered the organization's ability to quickly integrate employees from acquired companies, according to Odalis Tejada, Covanta's associate director for network services data center operations. Procuring, configuring and deploying new applications can take weeks or months. In 2015, Covanta chose to work with AWS in order to reduce its overhead, and selected 2nd Watch to lead the migration.

2nd Watch and AWS Professional Services performed a cloud readiness assessment of Covanta's application portfolio and then designed the optimal AWS architecture utilizing the Well-Architected Framework to support Covanta's business. AWS services used include: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), AWS Elastic Load Balancing, AWS Auto Scaling, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Glacier for data archiving backup. 2nd Watch also recommended Amazon Workspaces to provide instant, secure access to Covanta's business applications for employees of an acquired company. 2nd Watch will deliver long-term support and optimization of Covanta's AWS infrastructure through its Managed Cloud Services program.

"Our experience consistently demonstrates that AWS customers get the best project and business outcomes from a combination of APN Partners and specialists from AWS Professional Services," says Todd Weatherby, Director, AWS Professional Services. "The initiative with Covanta exemplified the power of this collaboration. Combining 2nd Watch's critical skills and long-term support with our AWS specialist delivered high-quality results for Covanta."

Today, Covanta is delivering services to users 90% faster and expects to save more than 60% in IT infrastructure costs once fully deployed on AWS. "We are now much more efficient, and the time that we used to spend managing the internal data center is now being spent supporting our business mission of sustainability," Tejada says. "2nd Watch has been a wonderful partner in helping us plan appropriately for the migration and maintain productivity while on our journey to the cloud."

"We are always encouraged by working with companies that are able to realize many business benefits, including cost savings, by moving to AWS," says Jeff Aden, EVP of Marketing & Strategic Business Development & Co-Founder of 2nd Watch. "Covanta has been true to its mission of sustainability by moving to the cloud, and the company benefited further by lowering its costs and increasing its intergration capabilities by moving to AWS."

About 2nd Watch
2nd Watch is an AWS Premier Partner providing managed cloud to enterprises. The company's subject matter experts, software-enabled services and cutting-edge solutions provide companies with tested, proven, and trusted solutions, allowing them to fully leverage the power of the public cloud. 2nd Watch solutions are high performing, robust, increase operational excellence, decrease time to market, accelerate growth and lower risk. Its patent-pending, proprietary tools automate everyday workload management processes for big data analytics, digital marketing, line-of-business and cloud native workloads. 2nd Watch is a new breed of partner which helps enterprises design, deploy and manage cloud solutions and monitors business critical workloads 24x7. 2nd Watch has more than 400 enterprise workloads under its management and more than 200,000 instances in its managed public cloud. The venture-backed company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. To learn more about 2nd Watch, visit www.2ndwatch.com or call 888-317-7920.