Case Study – Global Architecture & Consulting Firm

Cloud Solutions Group Together With NetApp (Talon Storage)
Successfully Delivers an Innovative Collab

Value Delivered

Immediate cost savings

Improved productivity

Increased scalability & agility

Best practice software-based solution

Removed reliance on legacy technology

Reduced operational complexity

Rapid access to shared files

Improved user experience

Enhanced data resiliency

Cost savings

Technology Used

Microsoft Azure Online

Net App Global

Lenovo

The client

A global architectural and consulting practice founded in Australia that specialises in the design and planning of buildings across a wide variety of sectors and disciplines, including aviation and transport, education, science and health, lifestyle and sport.

The organisation does this as a global design and consulting studio with a team of over 850 experts working across 15 studios in Australia, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. The “Global Studio” model allows them to work collaboratively across time zones and borders, using the latest technology to share design intelligence and strengthen their knowledge base around the world.

Our Approach

We spent a lot of time collaborating with the client understanding their requirements and frustrations with the Panzura solution. The process we undertook was:

An options analysis of the available solutions in the market with a recommendation as to what was best fit for the client.
An extensive Proof of Concept of the Talon/NetApp solution.
A solution Architecture of the end state solution.
Implementation of the solution with the client.

The Solution Delivered:

The solution provided several improvements over their existing architecture:

A complete software-based solution- increasing scalability and agility they lacked with the Panzura solution, which is based on hardware appliances installed at every site.
Reduced complexity by standardising to a single Cloud vendor.
Standard SMB-based file sharing -enabling interoperability with other systems and freeing them from the vendor lock-in they had with Panzura which uses a proprietary file-sharing protocol.
True 24/7 global collaborative working environment where every user has rapid access to shared files of all sizes. The NetApp solution uses incremental block-level file sync- which means that it doesn’t suffer from performance deterioration for every new site like on the Panzura solution.
Improved end user experience with enhanced performance and scalability –with the new Lenovo Servers and All Flash storage at each location.
File consolidation with enhanced data resiliency– by hosting their files on Cloud Volumes ONTAP, the client is protecting their business from downtime, data loss, data corruption and ransomware. This protection is supported for the locally cached data at all of their branch offices and they don’t need to invest any time or resources at the branch offices to setup or maintain enhanced data protection.
Cost savings -by removing the requirement for a local backup solution at each studio as Talon automatically replicates all file data to the cloud and reduced Cloud Storage costs with ONTAP’s storage efficiencies and auto-tiering of infrequently accessed data to low-cost blob storage.

The Cloud Solutions Group USP:

We are vendor-agnostic: we delivered the right fit solution for the client, as opposed to the standard vendors.
We are leaders in technology solutions for architecture & design businesses (3 of the top 4 firms in Australia)
We are Melbourne-based but have a global delivery footprint
We have over 10 years of industry experience with Architecture, Construction and Engineering firms.