Solution
Accountant – MacroPlan
Moving Physical Infrastructure to the Cloud
Company
Employees
Industry
Location
Decision Maker
MacroPlan
75
Property
Melbourne, Sydney, Gold Coast, Brisbane & Perth
George Alexiou
MacroPlan is a leading property advisory firm specialising in spatial analysis, GIS research, property economics, planning and retail.
The Challenge
MacroPlan engaged Cloud Made Simple in a consulting role to understand their current technology state and provide guidance on the most suitable future state for their infrastructure and technology model.
Their infrastructure was nearing the refresh deadline and were seeking a partner to assist with the refresh project, updating hardware across all locations and configuring vSphere and Windows DFS (distributed file system) for the network, integrated with their existing SD-WAN infrastructure.
The Solution
With “ease of connectivity” identified as one of the core requirements, CMS worked through each application and process in the organisation, CMS identified each supporting workload and the functional requirements to support daily business operation. Each workload that had a cloud/SaaS offering was migrated from on-premise, into the supporting cloud service –
• Exchange Server -> M365 Exchange Online
• Windows DFS (File Shares) -> M365 SharePoint Online
• Active Directory Domain Services -> Azure Active Directory
• Avaya Phone System -> MS Teams
Line-of-business applications that required server installations and an SQL database to operated, were migrated to Azure IaaS infrastructure and connectivity provided through an Azure virtual network gateway (always on VPN).
The Result
• Completely mobile workforce, connect and work from anywhere with improved connection speed
• Reduced digital estate from 14 virtual machines to 2
• Remove requirement for complex and costly SD-WAN configuration
• Removed device requirements for onsite/vpn access to connect to corporate resources
• 72% reduction in infrastructure partner maintenance costs
• 18% reduction in telephony connection and maintenance costs
• 34% reduction in time spent supporting staff connectivity
• 74% reduction in time administering IT systems
• 5% reduction in power costs
• Removed three year refresh cycle requirement costing over $160,000 – $200,000 IaaS cost below $2000 per month –
• Improved end-user connectivity
• Increased security leveraging the M365 additional security features
The feedback from MacroPlan staff and management is extremely positive, staff can connect from anywhere, home, the office, from the coffee shop and management are seeing the benefit of cost savings and more time for IT staff to focus on strategic goals. MacroPlan are now extending their cloud capability to introduce new GIS mapping capability within their organisation, further extending their USP.
The simplicity of the network and infrastructure is working so well, that some of the smaller satellite offices are moving to shared working spaces to remove unnecessary cost for buildings with specific networking requirements.