High-End Mining Company
Background
This family-owned business has been operating for nearly 100 years: first working with Portland Stone in 1927, then quarrying it, and finally mining it since 1998. The Company has moved, expanded and evolved continuously over the years and that includes the IT infrastructure and systems. They needed an IT solution that was reliable, secure, with high performance and scalability to adapt to ever changing business requirements. As well as this, key considerations for users were good quality communications and connections to, and across, the distributed sites.
Business Challenge
With over 50% of businesses suffering a cyber-attack in the last 12 months, the Company knew that by using on-site servers, they were at greater risk of a security breach. Furthermore, the mining process creates very fine and invasive dust material, which can impact on IT equipment and cause overheating. Any physical system issues such as this, or fire, water, theft, together with human error, technical and security issues create a vulnerability to inefficiencies, inconvenience and worse. Additionally, the Company needed the ability to work anywhere in the world easily.
Solution
To reduce these risks and improve performance, the IT infrastructure was ungraded by replacing the on-premise servers and associated hardware with the more centralised, cloud-based, office 365, and a virtual server solution. All client data was migrated from the physical server to SharePoint, in the cloud. The accounts platform was migrated to a virtual server in Azure giving the Company a fully closed based system, which could be accessed from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. The hardware, including servers, cabinets and cabling, etc., was removed, delivering not only the required benefits but also peace of mind.
Benefits
Connect & Communicate – Work from anywhere with an internet connection. Share documents with colleagues, seamlessly communicate through instant messaging and conduct video conferences easily.
Security – Most importantly your data is protected. With the removal of the servers, potential cyber targets were also removed. In a cloud-based environment Interfuture is better able to prevent, manage, monitor, and action security incidents.
Disaster Recovery – if an IT failure or security breach does occur - recovery and restoration is faster and more efficient.
Cost & Energy Efficiency – reduced power and cooling electrical costs, as the need for physical servers are removed. Removal of maintenance and replacement hardware costs.
Space & Noise - by removing the communications cabinet housing the physical server/s, as well as the associated equipment and cabling, a significant amount of space was reclaimed and a reduction in background noise achieved.
Scalability – there are no limitations with a cloud-based server. When the client wishes to expand their network (performance, storage, additional integrations or services), rather than paying for a new server, they only need to change their subscription plan.
