Introduction

Norwest Productions Pty Ltd is based in Sydney, with offices in multiple locations around Australia, New Zealand and China. Norwest Productions is Australia and New Zealand’s largest audio service provider, supplying big events such as Melbourne’s Commonwealth Games Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

Norwest Productions specialises in audio services for Special Events, Arena Concerts, Touring Bands, Theatre, Broadcast, Conferences and other corporate events. Currently consisting of 36 full-time and 45 part-time staff, the business has expertise in every area of the audio industry - from live production to broadcast to recording.

The Challenge

According to Adrian Riddell, General Manager of Norwest the search for a solution came with the realisation that their infrastructure and software were due for an upgrade in 2009.

“Our servers were due for a replacement within the next year, and some of our software was due for replacement too. I was looking at some rather large capital expenditure and also high operating costs, and was evaluating the options for how best to invest in our pending upgrades,” recounted Mr Riddell.

At the time, Norwest’s entire server infrastructure was housed and maintained in the Sydney head office. Norwest’s core business application - Rental Point was installed on a single Citrix server and accessed by users in the head office and all remote offices. The installation was limited to 20 users and was accessible via a single Internet connection, which was shared with the head office users. Due to constant access and an increasing larger requirement due to expansion, it often reached its limit and performance was often slow as a result – especially for Norwest’s remote office users.

Managing and maintenance of IT became a resource hungry exercise as Mr Riddell quickly realised. “l was spending a significant amount of time managing and maintaining our environment; meaning l couldn’t focus effectively on my core business. We knew there must be a more efficient solution out there,” commented Mr Riddell.
 

The Solution

“After researching l knew that not trying to build our own infrastructure made the most business sense for us, so l tried to find a provider who could truly deliver an end-to-end and highly reliable cloud based infrastructure solution. We needed to focus our core business and needed a professional provider who focused on enterprise grade delivery of our full IT solution and infrastructure.” commented Mr Riddell.

According to Mr Riddell, the combination of IntraPower’s innovative solution as well as savings presented by the solution was the main driver for selecting IntraPower.

“l was impressed with how IntraPower was able to articulate the savings we would make using their ROI tool. Being able to put a figure on a per user basis allowed us to plan for future requirements, instead of just paying for what we currently use. I was also reassured that IntraPower were able to host all the applications we require on a day-to-day basis. Not having to migrate to a different application or system was important to us, as we did not want the time and cost associated to retrain our staff.

Overall, IntraPower provided the best solution at a price that made sense”, explained Mr Riddell.

Norwest decided on the integration of IntraPower’s Desktop On-Demand, Managed Exchange and Application Hosting services, which were all parts of IntraPower’s complete Business On-Demand service.

“As part of the service, we gained access to professional, enterprise-grade infrastructure without having to build our own IT infrastructure. This is a marked improvement to our prior situation. In addition, the services provided by IntraPower are backed by 24x7 support with the security of proven backup and disaster recovery processes and procedures,” stated Mr. Riddell

Once IntraPower scoped Norwest’s business and IT issues,  a solution design was produced for Norwest’s approval. IntraPower then built the system in parallel to Norwest’s existing system including a new Managed Private Network for all of Norwest’s sites. Norwest’s software environment and data were duplicated into IntraPower’s data centre, and testing was done throughout the entire process.

“What we liked about this was that our business continued to run as normal throughout the process. There was minimum risk on our part, and the transition occurred in a single day. I was very impressed”, commented Mr Riddell. 

The Result

There have been many benefits to Norwest Productions as a result of engaging IntraPower, as Mr Riddell discovered:

The most obvious benefit was that we pay fixed costs per user based on our selected services. Our operating expenditure is transparent, allowing us to plan for any possible changes requiring us to scale up or down. Our infrastructure suffers from less downtime, we get access to enterprise level systems and we are more eficient as a result.

For myself personally, the most valuable aspect is the fact that l no longer have to manage our IT on a daily basis, and that means that l can concentrate solely on our core business. That’s made a massive difference.

About Norwest Productions

Norwest Productions Pty Ltd is Australia’s largest audio service provider. Offices are located in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Beijing. Recently Norwest Productions purchased Oceania Audio, New Zealand's largest provider of audio and lighting, as well as McLean Audio in Melbourne.

The company provides audio solutions for

• Special Events
• Arena Concerts
• Touring Bands
• Theatre
• Broadcast
• Conferences, Conventions and other corporate events
   

Norwest has a large full-time staff with expertise in every area of the audio industry – from live production to broadcast to recording.   

Introduction

Paragon Recruitment is based in Melbourne, and was formed in 1992. Paragon specialises in the recruitment of Project Directors and Managers, Change and Integration Managers, Business Analysts, Service Delivery Managers, Systems Architects and Project Office specialists. Paragon has operated as a niche player in the marketplace focussing on servicing the needs of a core group of clients. Although the business advertises positions through internet-based job boards, the majority of contractors, candidates and new clients come to Paragon as a result of an extensive referral network of satisfied contractors, former candidates and clients. Paragon’s reach, if necessary, can be extended through their membership of CareersMultiList (CML); an Australia-wide network of 120 Australia-owned recruitment companies. Through CML, Paragon is able to tap into an additional pool of quality candidates locally and nationally. Albert Kalaja is Owner and Founder of Paragon Recruitment. In 2008, he engaged Wavenet, an IntraPower company.  

The Challenge

In 2004, Paragon’s Recruitment IT environment was set up with a single user - which all users were logged on to. This prove to be inefficient and difficult to maintain. In addition to this, back up and was a source of concern according to Mr Kalaja. “I was doing backup manually, which was extremely time consuming. Also, the backups were actually stored on the premises, so if there had ever been a fire, we would have lost everything. This was definitely playing on my mind, and I knew that we definitely needed better risk management. “

“However, the fundamental issue was – even though we had hired an external company to manage our file server and the network – it boiled down to the services being provided by one individual. Even though he was very good at what he did, there was no guarantee that he would resolve our problems in the timeframe we needed because there was just one of him. If he was away from the office for example, we would have no one to turn to.

This was manageable for non-critical problems, and we managed to work around this. However, in instances when significant issues arose we were hamstrung by not having access to our system and in particular to our CRM. And because everything we did relied on our CRM, business would virtually come to a halt. “Unreliable IT meant that everyone was affected – dramatically.”  

The Solution

Paragon shortlisted three managed IT providers, but quickly eliminated two of the potential providers as they suffered operational difficulties during the period of evaluation.

“Wavenet offered the best solution of the other two, because they were able to explain their solution to me in more detail – and I perceived that they had a stronger commitment to their solution, and a greater belief in what they were doing” commented Mr Kalaja.

“In the end, it really came down to my desire to focus on my core business. I was sick of managing IT, rather than focusing all my attention on what we as a business are really good at and should be spending our time on. Sourcing all our IT needs from a professional enterprise grade cloud computing environment also meant that we would improve security and reliability, and also have access to helpdesk support. As mentioned before, we had an onsite server maintained by an external party, however not all tech support was able to be provided remotely (nor was it always timely).

I was also very confident that Wavenet could dramatically improve the security of my data and the reliability of our IT environment in general. The other thing that impressed me was that Wavenet was able to host a couple of programs that we rely upon – there’s Tris (which takes care of all of our recruitment operations), MYOB (our accounting software) and Microsoft Office suite of applications.

We decided on the virtual desktop on-demand solution, as it provides us with access to all our applications and data. We access this virtual desktop from PCs in our office, but we can access it from any PC that’s connected to the internet. We liked this solution because it most closely resembled our previous setup, but provided a lot more risk mitigation” explained Mr Kalaja.

Once Wavenet had scope Paragon requirements, a solution design was presented to Paragon prior to implementation.
 “The actual implementation was a surprisingly smooth process. Wavenet managed the preparation over a period of a few weeks, and then the changeover occurred in the space of only 1 day, in fact by morning it was live. That was pretty amazing!"commented Mr Kalaja.

The Result

There have been many benefits to Paragon as a result of engaging IntraPower.

“The product definitely met our expectations; and whilst it’s not something that our customers see directly, the solution has significantly improved our ability to serve them – meaning we can work from different locations and much more smoothly. We have significant fewer interruptions (in fact I can count them on one hand). We also have less unforeseen downtime due to application upgrade or exchange errors."

“Internally, we’re now confident that our data is secure, and we have a comprehensive risk management system in place. “But, I think the most dramatic change has been the fact that I no longer have to manage our IT&T. I wasted so much time on something that was not my core business, and now I am completely free to focus solely on growing my business. That change has been really powerful.”  

About Paragon Recruitment

 Based in Melbourne and formed in 1992, Paragon has operated as a niche player in the marketplace focussing on servicing the needs of a core group of clients. In fact, we think of ourselves as being "Big enough to deliver, yet small enough to care". Although we advertise positions through internet-based job boards, the majority of our contractors and candidates come to us as a result of an extensive referral network of satisfied contractors, former candidates and clients. Our reach is nationally extended through our membership of CareersMultiList (CML), an Australia-wide network of 120 Australian-owned recruitment companies. Through CML, we are able to tap into the largest pool of quality candidates locally and nationally. The multi-listing technology lets us flag vacancies to over 800 recruitment consultants while the client retains just one point of contact within Paragon. The field of specialty of the recruitment companies within CML is Information Technology, Telecommunications, Engineering, Finance & Accounting, Building & Construction, Retail and Sales & Marketing.

Financial Services Institute of Australasia (Finsia)

Membership organisation implements managed IT solution and saves 60% on internal solutions management costs.

About Finsia

The Financial Services Institute of Australasia (Finsia) is Australasia’ s premier membership organisation for the financial services industry, with more than 20,000 professional members. It was formed in 2005, following the successful merger of the Securities Institute of Australia and the Australasian Institute of Banking and Finance. In 2007, Finsia sold the education component of its business to Kaplan Professional. Finsia is the only professional association to represent the entire spectrum of financial services across Australasia – including the wealth management, banking & finance and capital markets sectors. Finsia employs approximately 36 staff and has offices throughout Australia and in New Zealand.

The Challenge

The sale of Finsia’ s education business in 2007 provided an ideal opportunity for the organisation to reassess their IT strategy and needs. They undertook extensive research and analysis to establish the IT needs of the business and the costs of managing a new IT solution
internally.

“ We conducted research to establish the costs of internally managing a new IT solution. The potential costs we needed to assess included building a robust data centre, communication links, network and server infrastructure purchasing hardware and software and training staff to implement and maintain it all,” said David Kennedy, Manager IT Services, Finsia.

“ When we broke down the potential cost of building and managing an internal IT solution, we decided to explore the option of managed IT services.”

The Solution

Finsia decided to conduct a full Request For Proposal (RFP) process to review and select a suitable end-to-end solution. They selected Wavenet, an IntraPower Group (ASX: IPX) company to provide a tailored Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution.

“ We selected Wavenet, an IntraPower Group company, as the best provider overall. Wavenet was able to manage the entire solution and implementation without outsourcing to an array of partners. This provided us with one point of contact, which ensured a smoother
transition process,” said Kennedy.

SaaS is an on-demand, scalable software solution that provides applications via a private network (or the Internet) for a monthly subscription fee. The applications are hosted by IntraPower in a secure data centre. The hosted desktop also means that applications and data are securely accessible from any PC – anywhere in the world.

The Finsia solution links all office locations to IntraPower’ s secure managed private network which hosts the SaaS solution. All Finsia data and applications including Microsoft Office as well as finance and membership systems are delivered centrally through this secure private network, which reduces the headache of managing the IT systems internally. Wavenet also deployed thin PC’ s and notebooks across all sites as well as a complete IP PABX solution throughout the Finsia network.

“ Overall the implementation was incredibly smooth. After signing contracts, we agreed on a timeline and work schedule which Wavenet adhered to during the entire implementation. The solution went live in December 2007,” added Kennedy.

The Benefits

“ Wavenet’ s proposed SaaS strategy offered a phenomenal 60% saving on the cost of managing our IT internally. Their flexibility, understanding of what we wanted to achieve and competitive pricing made their solution compelling,” said Kennedy.

“ Apart from the undeniable cost benefit of SaaS, the greatest benefit is being able to outsource the maintenance, upgrades and data protection with full confidence. Our downtime is significantly reduced – with all maintenance and upgrading scheduled for off-peak times – which has also made a considerable difference to our overall productivity,” he added.

As a result of the implementation solution, Finsia has had negligible downtime, maximum efficiency and productivity for a Fixed IT Cost per month – with no additional capital expenditure for the entire IT future.

With a SaaS model applications, system upgrades, maintenance, data protection and disaster recovery strategies are outsourced, freeing up resources and in house IT staff. This is a major business benefit, with in house IT staff able to focus on driving the broader IT strategy across the company as opposed to undertaking

Summary

With the Wavenet solution in place, Finsia has saved 60% on the cost of managing their IT internally. The flexibility provided by the solution ensures continued business efficiency, adaptability and compliance. Wavenet’ s SaaS solution gives companies of all sizes an opportunity to pass-on the burden of software maintenance, upgrades, licensing,
disaster recovery planning and troubleshooting so they can get on with expanding their businesses.