WriteImage CSB Fast-growing global engineering gets...
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“We grew much more quickly than we originally expected. If we had bought in-house servers, we’d already be in trouble. But because we went cloud-based, all we did was buy more licenses. "From our perspective, Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are just phenomenal. They save us so much grief." Martin Coles, Technical Development Director, Velosi Velosi is a fast-growing engineering company with 63 offices in 36 countries. They were rapidly outgrowing their in-house email and intranet servers, which were struggling to cope with a growing headcount. They also needed to support a worldwide workforce and, of course, keep costs under control. Velosi worked with Connexion, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to implement a solution using Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online. The new system has proved easier to manage with fewer IT staff. It provides easy, reliable access for staff around the world, including smartphone support. Above all, it has helped Velosi to cope with rapid growth while, at the same time, cutting costs compared with the in-house alternative. Business Needs Velosi is a 700-person, global engineering company that focuses on quality assurance, mainly in the oil, gas and utilities. For example, if an oil company buys a large piece of equipment for an oilrig, they hire Velosi to inspect it and make sure it will work as advertised. The company started in the early 1980s and has grown very rapidly since then. To tame its “higgledy-piggledy IT systems,” Martin Coles, Velosi’s Technical Development Director, consolidated its IT systems, including Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers, so that they ran from a UK data centre rather than dozens of different systems in different countries. While this approach worked well for around 150 users, by the time they reached 300 employees, “we realised that our servers just weren’t coping and that it was time to change.” The company was experiencing poor performance and outages. The servers were reaching the end of their service lives and they had been scaled to serve a much smaller workforce. The result? Instability, unreliability and increasing costs. To replace such as a system, Velosi needed something new that would guarantee uptime, reliability and worldwide access without performance hiccups and slowdowns. Coles also looked for something that was simple and easy to manage in order to keep the IT overhead costs as low as possible. Solution Velosi approached Connexion, Connexion is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Reading, near their UK regional head office. Connexion proposed Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint online and as well as a fully managed migration service for users and existing SharePoint sites. This would give Velosi the latest versions of tools that they were already using but without the cost and management overhead of hosting the servers themselves (or paying someone else to co-locate them in a share data centre). Cost was an important factor in the decision. Coles: “We looked at the capital cost of buying new hardware in-house and the rapidly increasing cost of staff to maintain it and our projections for future growth.” They didn’t like what they saw. Customer: Velosi PLC Website: http://www.velosi.com/ Customer Size: 700 Country or Region: UK Industry: Engineering Partner: Connexion Customer Profile The VELOSI Group, founded in 1982, provides Asset Integrity, Health, Safety and Environment (HSE), Quality Assurance, Quality Control and Engineering services to a number of leading national and multinational oil and gas companies, including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, ADNOC, PETRONAS, PetroBras, ONGC, and Chevron. The Velosi Group operates globally through five regional headquarters in the USA, the UK, Malaysia, South Africa, and the UAE and has 63 offices in 36 countries worldwide. Software and Services Services − Microsoft Exchange Online − Microsoft Office SharePoint Online For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies Microsoft Online Services Customer Solution Case Study Fast-growing global engineering gets world- class email, intranet.
Transcript of WriteImage CSB Fast-growing global engineering gets...
“We grew much more quickly than we originally expected. If we had bought in-house servers, we’d already be in trouble. But because we went cloud-based, all we did was buy more licenses. "From our perspective, Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are just phenomenal. They save us so much grief."
Martin Coles, Technical Development Director, Velosi
Velosi is a fast-growing engineering company with 63 offices in 36 countries. They were rapidly outgrowing their in-house email and intranet servers, which were struggling to cope with a growing headcount. They also needed to support a worldwide workforce and, of course, keep costs under control.
Velosi worked with Connexion, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to implement a solution using Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online.
The new system has proved easier to manage with fewer IT staff. It provides easy, reliable access for staff around the world, including smartphone support. Above all, it has helped Velosi to cope with rapid growth while, at the same time, cutting costs compared with the in-house alternative.
Business NeedsVelosi is a 700-person, global engineering company that focuses on quality assurance, mainly in the oil, gas and utilities. For example, if an oil company buys a large piece of equipment for an oilrig, they hire Velosi to inspect it and make sure it will work as advertised.
The company started in the early 1980s and has grown very rapidly since then. To tame its “higgledy-piggledy IT systems,” Martin Coles, Velosi’s Technical Development Director, consolidated its IT systems, including Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers, so that they ran from a UK data centre rather than dozens of different systems in different countries. While this approach worked well for around 150 users, by the time they reached 300 employees, “we realised that our servers just weren’t coping and that it was time to change.”
The company was experiencing poor performance and outages. The servers were reaching the end of their service lives and they had been scaled to serve a much smaller workforce. The result? Instability, unreliability and increasing costs.
To replace such as a system, Velosi needed something new that would guarantee uptime, reliability and worldwide access without performance hiccups and slowdowns. Coles also looked for something that was simple and easy to manage in order to keep the IT overhead costs as low as possible.
SolutionVelosi approached Connexion, Connexion is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Reading, near their UK regional head office. Connexion proposed Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint online and as well as a fully managed migration service for users and existing SharePoint sites. This would give Velosi the latest versions of tools that they were already using but without the cost and management overhead of hosting the servers themselves (or paying someone else to co-locate them in a share data centre).
Cost was an important factor in the decision. Coles: “We looked at the capital cost of buying new hardware in-house and the rapidly increasing cost of staff to maintain it and our projections for future growth.” They didn’t like what they saw.
Customer: Velosi PLCWebsite: http://www.velosi.com/Customer Size: 700Country or Region: UKIndustry: EngineeringPartner: Connexion
Customer ProfileThe VELOSI Group, founded in 1982, provides Asset Integrity, Health, Safety and Environment (HSE), Quality Assurance, Quality Control and Engineering services to a number of leading national and multinational oil and gas companies, including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, ADNOC, PETRONAS, PetroBras, ONGC, and Chevron. The Velosi Group operates globally through five regional headquarters in the USA, the UK, Malaysia, South Africa, and the UAE and has 63 offices in 36 countries worldwide.
Software and Services Services− Microsoft Exchange Online− Microsoft Office SharePoint Online
For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies
Microsoft Online ServicesCustomer Solution Case Study
Fast-growing global engineering gets world-class email, intranet.
On the one hand, there was the risk of underprovisioning and buying less hardware than they might need if they grew faster than expected. After all, this had happened once already. On the other hand, there was the expensive risk of overprovisioning and buying too much stuff ‘just in case’. Taking a five-year view, one approach looked risky, the other expensive.
The Microsoft cloud alternative began to look more and more attractive. Costs would rise in direct proportion to headcount and there was, effectively, no limit to growth. It also promised to be cheaper than buying hardware in-house. Finally, thanks to Microsoft’s global presence, service level agreements, and multi-national data centres, it promised better availability and performance than a system located in one data centre in one country
BenefitsUltimately, the choice was easy and Velosi selected Exchange Online for email and SharePoint Online for collaboration and document management. Connexion migrated all their users’ Exchange accounts and their SharePoint sites, while also upgrading them to the latest version of SharePoint.
The benefits were immediate and substantial: Easier to manage. “We’ve reduced the
number of people working on email,” says Coles. This has allowed them to defer hiring new IT staff and reassign existing staff to more interesting and useful roles.
Global access. With 63 offices in 36 countries, employees can now access the email and documents from Microsoft’s servers over the internet rather than using a congested VPN connection to Velosi’s data centre. “It’s also a security benefit,” says Coles, “Because we have fewer holes in our firewall now.”
Smartphone support. Exchange Online supports popular smartphones, including Blackberry and Apple iPhone, without any additional hardware or software and it is very easy for users to set up their phones.
Reliability. “We doubled the number of mailboxes and nobody blinks,” says Coles. Exchange Online can scale up easily and copes hundreds of mailboxes as easily as it manages a handful.
Cost savings. Replacing the three original servers would have cost Velosi approximately £80,000 with licensing.
Compared with the three-year cost of deploying Exchange Online and SharePoint Online for the number of users they had then, the company saved £10,000. But when you add in the savings in support, maintenance, staff and everything else, it could be much more. For example, Coles thinks that he has been able to save the cost of a full-time IT person at about £30,000 a year for three years.
Ultimately, though, the biggest benefit is that Microsoft hosted services has given Velosi tremendous flexibility. For example, in the year since Velosi switched to Exchange and SharePoint Online, they have doubled in size – two years ahead of plan. “If we had bought in-house servers we’d already be in trouble. But because we went cloud-based, all we did was buy more licenses. From our perspective, [Microsoft’s services] are just phenomenal. They save us so much grief.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published June 2011
“We made an immediate £10k saving but when you add the savings in support, maintenance, staff and everything else it adds up to much more: probably the cost of a full-time IT guy at about 30k a year for three years.”
Martin Coles, Technical Development Director, Velosi
