Migrating to the Cloud

Migrating to the Cloud Is the Obvious Choice

You know your IT provider is doing a good job if they have a plan for the unthinkable. Are you willing to bet on yours?

Company spotlight

Pipeline and Civil is an Auckland-based, private-owned, employee-owned company specialising in building water and waste pipelines. And because the company is wholly owned by the senior management and supervisory staff, this translates into a boutique experience for their clients.

The company is growing about 50% year-on-year in the past few years. The main driver of this success is their superior client and stakeholder engagement, the retention of technically skilled staff and risk management processes.

But this growth didn’t come without its fair share of challenges. Andy Corbett, whose official title is Commercial Manager, but also oversees the company’s IT infrastructure, shares that they have a “reactionary approach to managing IT” and that they needed to change that.

industry

Construction

Year founded

1993

Services provided

Construction of water and sewer pipelines

The Problem

Pipeline and Civil was originally working with a small IT provider for a number of years. But this IT provider wasn’t helping Andy and the team focus on its core business.

Andy said, “we have quite a basic maintenance/arrangement with a small IT company but we were very much driving it.” This is taking up too much time from Andy. Instead of finding new projects and other big picture strategies, Andy is stuck solving everyday technical issues.

“There’s some strategic stuff which I still want to do but there’s a whole lot of other stuff which is just bogging me down.”

As with most companies, everybody will try to carry along. And that this is just part of running a business.

Until something big happens…

The Solution

Andy shared a server horror story that prompted them to start looking for a new provider.

Because of some misconfiguration, they lost their entire document management system. Andy said, “That’s about 80,000 documents that just disappeared.” While they recovered about 90% of the data, this has led to extra downtime and unnecessary costs to Pipeline and Civil.

At that point, they were looking at two options: replace the on-premise server or migrate to the cloud.

The server incident made them aware that they didn’t have the necessary knowledge and skillset to manage an on-premise server. That’s why they opted to go to the cloud. Throughout that journey, Andy shared four other benefits they now realised after switching to the cloud below.

Cloud Migration Experience

When asked about the migration experience, Andy said “from a practical point of view, no one noticed honestly.”

“The guys/girls using it every day, I honestly don’t think they even know. Life just kinda carried on.”

We know that this is often a worry a lot of business owners often think about when migrating to the cloud. They think they will have to overhaul their workflows that it will take too much of their time.

Yes, there may be some behavioural change, but for the most part, if the migration is done properly, most users will not notice it.

From a practical point of view, no one noticed. It’s more from a risk management point of view. We’ve tidied up big holes in our security and backup systems.
Andy Corbett, Commercial Manager

4 Reasons Why Migrating to the Cloud Is a No Brainer

Financial benefit

The accounting treatment of the operating cost is slightly better on our balance sheets. Instead of outright capital expenditure, switching to the cloud gives you subscription costs which you pay out monthly in smaller amounts. This frees up your cash flow for better things.

No sense of having our own data center

The other reason why we chose the cloud is we want to get the gear off site. Especially last year, with the idea that everyone is working out of the office, why do we need to run our own data centre?

Cloud is scalable

We’re constantly running out of physical space as we grow. Why constrain ourselves with servers in the office.

Technology is constantly changing

On-premise servers have to be maintained. With the cloud, we don’t have to think too much about it. It’s “one less thing to worry about really.”

The Cloud Isn’t Just for Big Businesses

Using the cloud has a lot of advantages. Unless you’ve got the knowledge and technical skills to maintain servers properly and troubleshoot them when something goes wrong, using the cloud for your business is a no brainer.

If you’re unsure of what steps to take or want to get clarity on what is the perfect fit for your situation, chat with our experts today.

Hear From Our Clients

IT that revolves around you

iT360 really shone to me…the prompt delivery of a proposal was incredible. It was provided to us in a very professional way within a couple of days. I can see the breadth and depth of knowledge…even though we had software programs that they weren’t familiar with, they were keen to understand them…It was a really interesting exercise and we’re really thrilled to have iT360 onboard.

Sandy Sharp

Business Support Manager, AR & Associates

Below is an excerpt from my All Staff Support Services update that went out Friday morning. I would like to expand on this and thank all your frontline staff for assisting so many of our users. To have 100 staff working remotely and the whole organisation still connected within about three days is a big effort.

This has been an unprecedented event for iT360 and all IT providers. The team at iT360 have been tireless in supporting us and we now have at least one hundred staff working remotely in some capacity, through a mixture of Odyssey devices and personal devices…Having cloud-based mail and Microsoft Teams has enabled the Odyssey family to stay in touch and seamlessly continue to deliver a quality service to our Whai Ora.

Glenn Manson

Chief Financial Officer, Odyssey

Is your IT hurting or helping?

iT360 has been helping Kiwi businesses for over 25 years use technology to their advantage. It’s about time we do the same for you.

Migrating to the Cloud Is the Obvious Choice

Company spotlight

The Problem

The Solution

Cloud Migration Experience

4 Reasons Why Migrating to the Cloud Is a No Brainer

Financial benefit

No sense of having our own data center

Cloud is scalable

Technology is constantly changing

The Cloud Isn’t Just for Big Businesses

Hear From Our Clients

IT that revolves around you

Is your IT hurting or helping?

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