Defying Coronavirus Disruption

The global healthcare crisis has changed the world of work, perhaps forever. Organizations are facing sweeping changes to business continuity planning/disaster recovery requirements, remote working policies, software and hardware investment, data center management, and employee engagement as the world battles COVID-19. This so-called Black Swan Event is the very definition of disruption.

But this disruption varies from industry to sector, to organization. The construction industry sits with empty, non-essential job sites and canceled jobs; architecture and engineering firms are scrambling to find a way of moving into the virtual office; and the hardbound on-prem organization is suddenly rethinking its infrastructure to cope with virtualized working. Even those organizations that have made the cloud and digital investments are facing unexpected stress tests of IT infrastructure and capability.

Andy Knauf, CIO of Mead and Hunt, spoke to AECCafe Voice about how the business managed the disruptive impact of the coronavirus just weeks after completing an IT solution and workstation migration that was capable of handling it.

Q: What was the scope of the project that you completed prior to lockdown? And how did this affect your company’s performance after the pandemic hit?

Andy: When the pandemic hit, we went from a 10% remote workforce to 98% across our 30 plus offices around the country. We had our data in the cloud already and virtual controllers’ setup, but we needed to go from 60 cloud VDI workstations to 240 cloud VDI workstation in just days, everyone had to work from home, and it’s working out far better than I expected. We took all the right steps to prepare for something like this, and today, every one of our employees can work on critical infrastructure projects at the same level as if they were in the office. This has saved us millions – if we stopped work for even a day, the cost would have been just over half a million dollars.

We experimented with different cloud-based systems before we finally ended up with Workspot on Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure hosts the data and Workspot VDI workstations allowing employees to log into their regular work environments from any connected computer. They can run the full suite of design software, as all compute is in the cloud – even the most modest computer is capable of navigating and working with large BIM files.

Another aspect of our infrastructure investment was into cross-site BIM collaboration with global file locking. The latter is vital in our industry. If you’re working on multi-office solutions on the same project over multiple servers, you’ll have issues – files not correctly closed, information that is overwritten, lack of visibility into who accessed a file, and when – making file locking the secret sauce in this industry. We worked with Panzura to implement a global cloud file locking solution, and we used the Panzura Freedom NAS and Freedom Collaboration tools to create an advanced cloud architecture that delivers fast access to our data files.

Q: When did you decide to move to the cloud, what made you change your mind?

Andy: We moved our data to the cloud almost seven years ago and our workstations to the cloud two and a half years ago. It was a big step when we decided the cloud was best for us, and we struggled with it at first, but now it’s easier than putting together an on-prem solution. But I started to investigate what companies like Amazon and Microsoft were doing and realized what a difference it could make. For example, you can’t compete on price with what they offer versus putting hardware down. What the cloud can deliver versus on-prem in terms of cost investment is significant. With the cloud, I’m getting access to the same files, with the same performance and experience anywhere I work in the world. I don’t have to educate my users on multiple systems – there’s one system that’s easy to use, and everyone can access it.

As an example, at our company, VDI demand can significantly impact speed even if you build the biggest VDI box. Users don’t want to have to deal with speed or access constraints when they’re remote working. In the office, they would have multiple tools that would ensure speed, access, and failover, but this dynamic has changed with the pandemic, and everyone is now grappling for access to the same files, at the same time, from different locations.

From a business continuity/disaster recovery perspective, we take a snapshot every hour of our files, and we do an incremental one every night. Since we’ve been working in the cloud, we’ve only really gone back to the snapshots, which are easy for the users to access and pull down. In the past, we would spend days recovering files, now with the snapshots, they’re on the same drive, and they can be pulled up at any time. There’s no need for the users to contact IT for file recovery; they can access the snapshot easily at any time.

Q: Did you experience any issues as remote working became mandatory?

Andy: Honestly, it really wasn’t a big issue. Some people had older routers at home, and some we had to hardwire them to get better speed, but we managed to get those issues resolved relatively quickly. The fact that Workspot doesn’t require significant bandwidth to run efficiently has meant that even those people with limited connectivity have been able to keep on working. This has been something of a relief considering that our clients haven’t changed their deadlines – we’re expected to keep on working regardless.

The business implications of losing even one of these DOT contracts would have been prohibitive, so the fact that our infrastructure has held up throughout the pandemic has been incredible. Many companies were not prepared for what the virus brought – many are still working, in the same way they were ten years ago, and haven’t got even a fraction of the infrastructure required to work from home.

Q: What advice would you give to companies that have their data locked in the office server?

Andy: Start investing in cloud backups. This will help mitigate the risk of being locked out of your data. Many companies are currently unable to operate because the total stop-order has meant they can’t get to their data as it’s sitting on the server in the office. Companies such as Panzura offer cloud storage – they’ve got a free Cloud Filer software instance available for six months in either AWS or Microsoft Azure for customers that need to provide workers with access to data rapidly. Just remember, it will take time to shift the data, so don’t expect an overnight miracle. Do it right, and work with the right partners to make sure it’s done well.

Q: What about security? How has this been managed in the era of remote working?

Andy: Panzura’s immutable data architecture has a robust security stance – once the data is written, it can’t be changed. This means it can’t be affected by ransomware. File services on the front-end or client-side of a Panzura filer are serviced by SMB or NFS protocols, and the data is then written to a configured cloud such as Azure. While it’s written, the data is deduplicated, compressed, and encrypted in real-time with an immutable and secure architecture.

A lot of companies I know have been affected by ransomware. By using Panzura, we have added that extra level of security. With employees potentially making security mistakes while working remotely – the threat has increased as hackers recognize this vulnerability – it makes a big difference knowing that ransomware can’t affect our data.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2020 at 4:00 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.