As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of engineering and architecture firms were crippled without the ability to access applications from home. That wasn’t the case for Schneider Geomatics.
Background
Schneider Geomatics Engineering is a family-owned firm founded in 1962 on the principles of high quality and excellent client service. Schneider has a large geographic footprint, serving 20% of the counties in the U.S., with numerous regional offices throughout the Midwest and East Coast providing landscape architecture, UAS services, site design and development, and LiDAR services.
Pain Points
Most IT companies don’t want to support engineering firms because they can be relatively complex with large storage concerns, remote users, multiple locations, and a critical need of CAD applications. Schneider was no exception with pain points including:
- 5 different locations
- Over 100 employees
- 50% high-end CAD graphic users
- 30 Terabytes of data which resulted in thousands in back up costs annually
- A complex & expensive server infrastructure needing to be refreshed
However, businesses with these exact needs and circumstances make up over 50% of Avatara’s client base. Schneider was experiencing many of the same pain points with which Avatara is well familiar. They also found themselves in a unique position shortly after they became a client with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
CompleteCloud Solution
Schneider made their transition to CompleteCloud in December of 2019. Shortly after, in March of 2020, state and nationwide work from home restrictions were put in place to help fight the spread of COVID-19. For businesses that rely heavily on CAD, working from home can be extremely challenging due to the nature that most CAD stations are tethered to the office. As a result, being forced to work from home crippled hundreds of engineering and architecture firms without the ability to access these applications from home. That wasn’t the case for Schneider.
In less than a week, Schneider was able to transition every employee at every location to working from home. That included 50% of their employees that are graphics users and needed access at home and in the field. They were able to flawlessly make the shift to working from home because of the CompleteCloud Platform.
- CompleteCloud Infrastructure: With all their servers and desktops moved offsite into secure SSAE type 2 Data Centers, every employee was able to securely access their virtual machines and data from home on their personal computers or work laptops.
- Support: Our support team was still there, 24×7, whenever they had questions or needed help in their new home offices (or kitchen tables, living room couches, or patios).
- Productivity: Chat, video, and file sharing applications helped employees to effectively communicate with one another despite being incredibly spread out.
- Security: Just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean you shouldn’t remain compliant and secure. Schneider was able to take their security envelope home and maintain security despite not being in their 4 walls.
Results
Without CompleteCloud, Schneider would have been in dire straits. It was so impactful that Schneider’s President said,
“If this had happened in December before we had you guys, we would have been dead in the water. I’ve watched my wife (and others) struggle accessing their corporate networks via VPN and truly appreciate the ease that CompleteCloud gives me to our network. I have experienced no downtime or lag and in the 3 weeks we’ve been working from home. In addition, access to the network has been without issue. As someone who has always been a bit of a skeptic working in this fashion, count me as a convert. I truly appreciate the flexibility we have to work in this fashion. Doubly so watching friends struggle day over day with more traditional IT configurations.”
The market is shifting to make workforces more mobile and not being chained to the office. Not only does this improve employee productivity, but it also improves employee satisfaction. Unfortunately, most businesses today are incapable of making this shift and COVID-19 revealed the Achilles Heel of many businesses’ IT solutions.
To learn more about CompleteCloud as a solution to your unique IT struggles, contact us.
