A 30-year business, freed from its server room.
Ageing in-office servers were one bad day away from stopping the business. The fix cost less than replacing them.
One building, one server room, one bad day from a stop.
CommsPlus Distribution has been a telecommunications hardware distributor for over 30 years, supplying and supporting brands like Panasonic, Gigaset and Yealink across Australia.
Like a lot of established businesses, CommsPlus relied completely on their IT to function, and all of it lived on servers in their building. If anything happened to that building, or those servers, the business stopped.
The equipment was also at the end of its useful life. That meant growing security risk, and almost no safe options for remote access at a time when staff expected flexibility in where and how they worked.
CommsPlus didn't want a patch job. With leadership backing the change, they wanted IT that supported modern ways of working and real collaboration across sites, without giving up security, and without blowing the budget. Their requirements were clear: work from any device anywhere, best-practice security, proper disaster recovery, collaboration across multiple sites, and a setup that stayed cost-effective.
The right things moved to the cloud. The right things kept.
After sitting down with the CommsPlus team face to face (several times; this is a decision you get right before you build), we designed a hybrid cloud environment. In plain terms: move what belongs in the cloud to the cloud, and keep on-site only what genuinely needs to be on-site.
- Email, files and collaboration moved to Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online and SharePoint), so the tools staff use every day stopped depending on the office being up
- Disaster recovery moved to the cloud, automated and ready to take over when needed
- New on-site Windows infrastructure handled the things the cloud couldn't, with proper security and access controls, integrated cleanly with the cloud side
- Every computer replaced with modern HP hardware running a current, secured Windows build and managed endpoint security
Work from anywhere. Recover from anything.
- Key systems accessible securely from any device, anywhere, with no dependence on the office server room
- Teams collaborate on documents in real time across sites and share information instantly
- Disaster recovery is automated, in the cloud, ready to take over when required
- Modern working options lifted staff satisfaction, helped keep good people, and widened the pool when hiring
- The cost assessment proved it: hybrid came out more cost-effective than replacing everything on-premises, with all the workplace benefits on top
Staff can now work anywhere, on any device, any time.
Still running your business out of one server room?
The risk isn't dramatic. It's quiet: one building, one server room, one bad day away from a stopped business. In about 30 minutes we'll show you where you stand.