Migrating to the Cloud Is the Obvious Choice

Client

Pipeline and Civil

Industry

Construction

Services

Construction of water and sewer pipelines

Year founded

1993

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?

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.

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.