Crowe UK are a leading tax, audit, risk and advisory firm. They are an independent member of Crowe Global - the eighth largest accounting network in the world. Crowe UK are trusted by thousands of organisations to provide leading insights, specialist advice and deep market knowledge. They offer a wide range of services, including a unique forensic service that helps prevent fraud and cybercrime.

Crowe UK had a client needing to find fraud in large amounts of data. For extra support on this project, they contacted S-branch, a leading criminal analytics consultancy who have helped fight gun crime and animal trafficking. S-branch advised using IBM i2 Analyst’s Notebook - a complex visual analytics solution used by organisations such as NATO to detect crime using data.

As the analysts at Crowe UK worked remotely, they needed to use IBM i2 in the cloud (AWS) using a pre-configured environment. Tough deadlines meant they also needed to start using it immediately. Crowe UK required experts to help them deploy IBM i2 within AWS quickly, securely and effectively.

Crowe UK chose Bytes AWS to deploy IBM i2 due to their extensive knowledge and experience. Bytes' team were venturing into new territory with this project, as IBM i2 is very rarely deployed in AWS. However, they were keen to get started and kicked things off with a detailed scoping call to determine requirements.

Bytes’ architects decided to host the environment in Amazon WorkSpaces – a reliable and cost-effective solution that enables users to access their desktop securely anywhere. This would enable Crowe UK to use IBM i2 remotely. Before building the environment, Bytes provided both high-level and low-level designs to ensure it was built to AWS Well Architected Best Practices.

So that Crowe UK could use the solution immediately, Bytes’ architects built and tested the environment using infrastructure as code. Bytes also designed the environment to ‘rest’ when not in use, which would minimise cloud running costs, and they boosted security by using encryption and giving full ownership to Crowe UK.

This trailblazing project was a success. Crowe UK were able to use IBM i2 remotely, reliably and securely using the AWS cloud platform. This meant their analysts were able to uncover fraudulent activity and provide valuable information for their client.

As a member of an international group, accessing this environment securely and quickly anywhere was of huge benefit for Crowe UK. This could not have been achieved without AWS technology, or the expertise of Bytes AWS and S-branch.