A global online events company, running 600+ virtual events every year, for hundreds of thousands of registered users, with USD$140m annual revenues.
With a data center contract up for renewal and a massive increase in multi-year expenditure impending, the pressure was on to modernize and migrate to the cloud.
Redgate Monitor and Redgate Flyway Enterprise combined to accelerate a lift-and-shift approach, as well as introducing DevOps practices to modernize database team culture.
Overall company profitability dramatically improved, as a consequence of shifting from capex-heavy infrastructure to manageable monthly cloud costs and operational performance improvements.
A leading online events company based in North America, operating on a global scale.
With more than 220 staff, the company generates around USD$140 million in revenue and runs approximately 600 events annually. Some events have up to 185,000 registered users and 45,000 concurrent users.
At project outset, their on-premises infrastructure included 15 large SQL servers with 30 databases containing sensitive PII data requiring GDPR compliance, configured in a high-availability setup with 3-node clusters (2 in Chicago, 1 in Virginia) using availability groups. The team managing the estate included a dedicated DBA, two contractors from the subcontinent, three DevOps cloud engineers, two network engineers, and four infrastructure engineers for the data center.
“With Redgate Monitor we were able to easily identify poor performing queries that were going to make it very expensive”
Hamish Watson, CEO
When this North American-based global online events company realized their data center contract was expiring, the pressure was on to exit or face painful escalating costs and potential SLA violations, which could result in reputational damage and service disruption for customers accessing events.
The pressure was compounded when they realized an additional complexity: the legacy SQL Server databases contained GPDR sensitive assets, were inefficient and expensive to run, and would make sub-optimal cloud workloads. They needed to overhaul their workloads, increase efficiency all while avoiding costly downtime and performance issues. To achieve this the team knew they needed to instigate a migration to the cloud, but they lacked the skills and capacity to do so in-house.
“By partnering with MorphiT and leveraging Redgate’s tools, they didn’t just meet a looming deadline; they unlocked a new level of agility and resilience”
Hamish Watson, CEO
Hamish Watson, CEO of MorphiT and Microsoft Data Platform MVP, was brought in to lead the transformation. His approach combined AWS’ Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) with database performance tuning and DevOps enablement.
Using Redgate Monitor, Hamish identified high-cost, poorly performing queries that would drive up cloud costs if ignored.
“We had the hard facts from Monitor for the utilization… a known workload that we could repeat against the database. We were able to easily identify poor performing queries that were going to make it very expensive. The query executions capability in Redgate Monitor helped to identify where the workload was coming from so that we could see what it was connecting to and run queries on the database.”
Hamish combined the deep database observability from Redgate Monitor and application layer observability in Grafana and CloudWatch, with the advanced capabilities of Redgate Flyway Enterprise. Together these solutions systematically refined poorly performing database queries, ensuring that the target database reached a stable, optimized baseline that would make for an optimal cloud workload. Ultimately, this allowed for the precise rightsizing of the intended RDS environment.
As Hamish outlined, “I could overlay the DB performance insights with the application layer insights… and keep repeating until we had removed all the bottlenecks. This in turn provided the impetus and justification to introduce DevOps practices to the database.”
Hamish used this period of fine-tuning to demonstrate the value of replacing manual database deployments with version-controlled environments. And by introducing comparison engines that eliminate drift and integrate with Jenkins, the customer benefited from repeatable and scalable automated deployments.
Using AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), Hamish and the team were able to successfully lift and shift their workloads into AWS RDS. Redgate Monitor was then used again, post-migration to assess performance and repeat tuning cycles.
“This wasn’t just about tech. It was about enabling the business to grow without fear”
Hamish Watson, CEO
Business Benefits
Technical Benefits
“By using Redgate Monitor to set the baseline before migration, I was able to tune queries and reduce the core count that SQL Server needed in AWS from r5n.16xlarge (64 vCPU and 512 GiB memory), to r5n.4xlarge (16 vCPU and 128 GiB memory)”, recalls Hamish. But for his customer, this wasn’t just a technical upgrade, it was a strategic leap forward. As Hamish reflects, “When they partnered with MorphiT and leveraged Redgate’s tools, they didn’t just meet a looming deadline; they unlocked a new level of agility and resilience”.
The shift to the cloud wasn’t about chasing trends, it was about solving real business problems. From unpredictable infrastructure costs to performance bottlenecks that risked user experience, the stakes were high. But with a clear plan, strong collaboration, and the right tools, the team turned those challenges into measurable wins.
Their migration enabled geographic expansion, improved security posture with TDE, TLS, and encrypted transit. Plus, they resolved communication issues between developers and DBAs by shifting from manual to automated database deployments.
Hamish Watson’s approach—grounded in transparency, data-driven decisions, and empathy for the internal teams—helped build trust and momentum. The result? A modern, secure, and scalable platform that’s ready to support the company’s continued growth across continents. As Hamish concluded, “This wasn’t just about tech. It was about enabling the business to grow without fear.”
A global online events company, running 600+ virtual events every year, for hundreds of thousands of registered users, with USD$140m annual revenues.
With a data center contract up for renewal and a massive increase in multi-year expenditure impending, the pressure was on to modernize and migrate to the cloud.
Redgate Monitor and Redgate Flyway Enterprise combined to accelerate a lift-and-shift approach, as well as introducing DevOps practices to modernize database team culture.
Overall company profitability dramatically improved, as a consequence of shifting from capex-heavy infrastructure to manageable monthly cloud costs and operational performance improvements.
“With Redgate Monitor we were able to easily identify poor performing queries that were going to make it very expensive”
Hamish Watson, CEO
A leading online events company based in North America, operating on a global scale.
With more than 220 staff, the company generates around USD$140 million in revenue and runs approximately 600 events annually. Some events have up to 185,000 registered users and 45,000 concurrent users.
At project outset, their on-premises infrastructure included 15 large SQL servers with 30 databases containing sensitive PII data requiring GDPR compliance, configured in a high-availability setup with 3-node clusters (2 in Chicago, 1 in Virginia) using availability groups. The team managing the estate included a dedicated DBA, two contractors from the subcontinent, three DevOps cloud engineers, two network engineers, and four infrastructure engineers for the data center.
“By partnering with MorphiT and leveraging Redgate’s tools, they didn’t just meet a looming deadline; they unlocked a new level of agility and resilience”
Hamish Watson, CEO
When this North American-based global online events company realized their data center contract was expiring, the pressure was on to exit or face painful escalating costs and potential SLA violations, which could result in reputational damage and service disruption for customers accessing events.
The pressure was compounded when they realized an additional complexity: the legacy SQL Server databases contained GPDR sensitive assets, were inefficient and expensive to run, and would make sub-optimal cloud workloads. They needed to overhaul their workloads, increase efficiency all while avoiding costly downtime and performance issues. To achieve this the team knew they needed to instigate a migration to the cloud, but they lacked the skills and capacity to do so in-house.
“This wasn’t just about tech. It was about enabling the business to grow without fear”
Hamish Watson, CEO
Hamish Watson, CEO of MorphiT and Microsoft Data Platform MVP, was brought in to lead the transformation. His approach combined AWS’ Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) with database performance tuning and DevOps enablement.
Using Redgate Monitor, Hamish identified high-cost, poorly performing queries that would drive up cloud costs if ignored.
“We had the hard facts from Monitor for the utilization… a known workload that we could repeat against the database. We were able to easily identify poor performing queries that were going to make it very expensive. The query executions capability in Redgate Monitor helped to identify where the workload was coming from so that we could see what it was connecting to and run queries on the database.”
Hamish combined the deep database observability from Redgate Monitor and application layer observability in Grafana and CloudWatch, with the advanced capabilities of Redgate Flyway Enterprise. Together these solutions systematically refined poorly performing database queries, ensuring that the target database reached a stable, optimized baseline that would make for an optimal cloud workload. Ultimately, this allowed for the precise rightsizing of the intended RDS environment.
As Hamish outlined, “I could overlay the DB performance insights with the application layer insights… and keep repeating until we had removed all the bottlenecks. This in turn provided the impetus and justification to introduce DevOps practices to the database.”
Hamish used this period of fine-tuning to demonstrate the value of replacing manual database deployments with version-controlled environments. And by introducing comparison engines that eliminate drift and integrate with Jenkins, the customer benefited from repeatable and scalable automated deployments.
Using AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), Hamish and the team were able to successfully lift and shift their workloads into AWS RDS. Redgate Monitor was then used again, post-migration to assess performance and repeat tuning cycles.
Business Benefits
Technical Benefits
“By using Redgate Monitor to set the baseline before migration, I was able to tune queries and reduce the core count that SQL Server needed in AWS from r5n.16xlarge (64 vCPU and 512 GiB memory), to r5n.4xlarge (16 vCPU and 128 GiB memory)”, recalls Hamish. But for his customer, this wasn’t just a technical upgrade, it was a strategic leap forward. As Hamish reflects, “When they partnered with MorphiT and leveraged Redgate’s tools, they didn’t just meet a looming deadline; they unlocked a new level of agility and resilience”.
The shift to the cloud wasn’t about chasing trends, it was about solving real business problems. From unpredictable infrastructure costs to performance bottlenecks that risked user experience, the stakes were high. But with a clear plan, strong collaboration, and the right tools, the team turned those challenges into measurable wins.
Their migration enabled geographic expansion, improved security posture with TDE, TLS, and encrypted transit. Plus, they resolved communication issues between developers and DBAs by shifting from manual to automated database deployments.
Hamish Watson’s approach—grounded in transparency, data-driven decisions, and empathy for the internal teams—helped build trust and momentum. The result? A modern, secure, and scalable platform that’s ready to support the company’s continued growth across continents. As Hamish concluded, “This wasn’t just about tech. It was about enabling the business to grow without fear.”
Whether you want more details about Redgate Flyway, a demo or information on best practices – get in touch with us.
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