Learn how The Local migrated to GCP in 2 months, saving 65% on cloud costs and improving security by 40% with Microtica's expertise.
The Local is a prominent global news outlet serving audiences across multiple countries with tens of millions monthly hits. Known for delivering accurate, up-to-date news in various categories such as politics, culture, and business, The Local has established itself as a trusted source for global readers. To meet the demands of a high-traffic, content-driven platform, they require a robust, transparent, and cost-effective cloud infrastructure that ensures seamless delivery, high availability, and optimal performance for readers worldwide.
The Challenge
As The Local continued to scale its global presence, their reliance on Cloudflare presented an unexpected challenge: a lack of transparency. Month after month, they found themselves grappling with opaque pricing structures and unclear insights into usage. Questions lingered without answers:
- "What exactly are we paying for?"
- "Which services or components are driving these rising costs?"
The numbers didn’t add up, and The Local began to feel disconnected from the infrastructure they depended on to deliver reliable content to millions of readers.
At the same time, The Local had already made significant investments in Google Cloud Platform (GCP), particularly leveraging Cloud Run for scalable infrastructure. However, operating Cloudflare alongside GCP introduced a fragmented, inefficient setup. The team faced three key hurdles:
- Inconsistent Infrastructure: Managing multiple cloud solutions created unnecessary complexity and duplicated efforts.
- Cost Inefficiencies: Without clear visibility into Cloudflare's pricing model, optimizing cloud spend became nearly impossible.
- Operational Overhead: Jumping between providers to manage security, delivery, and applications slowed workflows and added friction to operations.
For a fast-moving media company like The Local, these inefficiencies were unsustainable. They needed a unified solution to consolidate their infrastructure within GCP, improve cost visibility, and streamline operations.
The Solution: How Microtica Helped
The Microtica DevOps team worked closely with The Local to plan and execute a seamless migration from Cloudflare to GCP. Key steps included:
- Migrated development, test and production environments to GCP.
- Transitioned one critical subdomain to GCP to ensure minimal disruption.
- Integrated advanced GCP services to meet performance and security needs:some text
- Cloud Load Balancing + SSL: Ensuring scalable traffic management with secure connections.
- Cloud CDN: Optimized content delivery for global audiences.
- Cloud Armor: Added powerful DDoS protection and security policies.
- BeyondCorp Zero Trust: Enhanced access control and zero-trust security for applications.
- Supported backend and frontend application migration within the unified GCP infrastructure.
Throughout the migration, Microtica's team provided clear communication, rapid problem-solving, and consistent collaboration.
Results: Tangible Benefits for The Local
The GCP migration delivered remarkable outcomes for The Local:
1. Cost Savings
- Achieved a 65% reduction in monthly cloud costs compared to the previous Cloudflare setup.
2. Unified Infrastructure
- Consolidated all infrastructure on GCP, leading to increased transparency and streamlined operations.
- Simplified cost management with detailed insights into usage and expenses.
3. Improved Security
- Tightened security measures by 40% through enhanced GCP security layers like Cloud Armor and BeyondCorp Zero Trust.
4. Efficiency in Execution
- Despite the scale and complexity of the migration, the project was completed efficiently within a 2 months time period, thanks to the expertise of our team. By streamlining tasks and applying proven workflows, we ensured that the work progressed consistently and effectively, achieving the desired results.
Client Feedback
The Local was highly satisfied with the migration process, highlighting:
- Smooth communication with Microtica's team.
- Expert execution that ensured minimal downtime and disruption.
- A clear path to a more secure, transparent, and cost-efficient cloud infrastructure.
The migration to GCP was seamless. Microtica's team delivered exactly what we needed: a transparent, cost-effective setup with improved security. - Dusan Novakovic, CTO @The Local
Conclusion
By partnering with Microtica, The Local successfully migrated from Cloudflare to GCP, unlocking significant benefits:
- 65% cost savings.
- 40% security improvement.
- A fully unified infrastructure that delivers transparency and efficiency.
For news, media outlets, and information-based companies like The Local, Microtica's expert DevOps services ensure a smooth transition to optimized, modern cloud solutions.
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