Steam Whistle nets significant savings by moving to cloud-based solution
$1.6 million over six years
By Ian Harvey
February 25, 2011
February 25, 2011
It’s rare, but sometimes growth can be too much of a good thing. Steam Whistle Brewing is on track to employ more than 100 people in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Not bad for a company that started with three people and an idea in 2000. And with that rapid growth came the challenges most enterprises face, especially around technology. What may be fine for a small group of people in a downtown Toronto office isn’t going to work when you’re spread across the country.
“When we first started we didn’t even have an IT department,” said Sybil Taylor, Steam Whistle’s communications director. “As we grew we added an outsource service, which would come and fight fires when there were issues. We were a small business which was becoming a medium-sized business.”
That strategy, however, wasn’t keeping up with the growth needs of the enterprise, which had set a lofty goal of 20 per cent per year. And there were issues even with the existing set-up. “We’d send e-mail from one cubicle to another and it would take 20 minutes to get there,” Taylor said. The company decided to take control, hiring an IT manager in the form of Kevin David, whose first task was to assess the situation and look at how to best configure a solution that could keep up with the company’s growth curve.
“We had been looking at buying new servers and upgrading but it was going to cost $55,000 (for e-mail servers alone) and would last maybe five years,” Taylor said.
The answer was to go to the cloud with Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). It includes Microsoft Exchange for e-mail and calendaring; SharePoint for portals and document sharing; Office Communications Online, which incorporates presence, instant messaging and peer-to-peer audio; and Live Meeting for Web and video conferencing.
“Kevin saw an offer which would give 10 users a free trial for a couple of months,” Taylor said. “The first thing we found was that it took just seconds to send and receive e-mails.”
While there were some hiccups, most of the issues were ironed out with the pilot group, and within a few months the new system was rolled out across the company. The platform allowed the deployment of BlackBerrys across the board, especially important for the on-the-road sales team. The system also supports presence, meaning users know where other employees are and what they’re doing. “It means you’re not wasting time or long distance because we’re dealing with different time zones, because you can see where people are available and what’s best: e-mail, mobile or phone.”
The upshot is that communication is instantaneous, documents can be pushed out to groups, updates go out in a second and feedback comes in real time.
Long-term vision
The cloud solution also includes virus protection, security patches and feature updates distributed centrally and seamlessly, leaving David to focus on forward-looking projects.
“Kevin has the time to troubleshoot with things like workflow, instead of menial things like e-mail, and also to work with suppliers to link technology,” Taylor said. “A German keg manufacturer, for example, can log into our process control system and troubleshoot performance issues.”
The per-user cost is about $13 a month per seat, with about 75 users, and a six-year cumulative cost analysis shows hosted services work out to about $338,000, compared to $1,942,000 for an in-house solution.
Also in this issue:
Are you using cloud computing?
What cloud computing and social media tools bring to corporate Canada
Better, faster, stronger: Productivity gains edge out cost as key cloud benefit
Cloud Computing Supplement: Soaring upwards with cloud communications
VoIP Supplement: Moving to modern cloud-based communications
Cloud Computing blog
“When we first started we didn’t even have an IT department,” said Sybil Taylor, Steam Whistle’s communications director. “As we grew we added an outsource service, which would come and fight fires when there were issues. We were a small business which was becoming a medium-sized business.”
That strategy, however, wasn’t keeping up with the growth needs of the enterprise, which had set a lofty goal of 20 per cent per year. And there were issues even with the existing set-up. “We’d send e-mail from one cubicle to another and it would take 20 minutes to get there,” Taylor said. The company decided to take control, hiring an IT manager in the form of Kevin David, whose first task was to assess the situation and look at how to best configure a solution that could keep up with the company’s growth curve.
“We had been looking at buying new servers and upgrading but it was going to cost $55,000 (for e-mail servers alone) and would last maybe five years,” Taylor said.
The answer was to go to the cloud with Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). It includes Microsoft Exchange for e-mail and calendaring; SharePoint for portals and document sharing; Office Communications Online, which incorporates presence, instant messaging and peer-to-peer audio; and Live Meeting for Web and video conferencing.
“Kevin saw an offer which would give 10 users a free trial for a couple of months,” Taylor said. “The first thing we found was that it took just seconds to send and receive e-mails.”
While there were some hiccups, most of the issues were ironed out with the pilot group, and within a few months the new system was rolled out across the company. The platform allowed the deployment of BlackBerrys across the board, especially important for the on-the-road sales team. The system also supports presence, meaning users know where other employees are and what they’re doing. “It means you’re not wasting time or long distance because we’re dealing with different time zones, because you can see where people are available and what’s best: e-mail, mobile or phone.”
The upshot is that communication is instantaneous, documents can be pushed out to groups, updates go out in a second and feedback comes in real time.
Long-term vision
The cloud solution also includes virus protection, security patches and feature updates distributed centrally and seamlessly, leaving David to focus on forward-looking projects.
“Kevin has the time to troubleshoot with things like workflow, instead of menial things like e-mail, and also to work with suppliers to link technology,” Taylor said. “A German keg manufacturer, for example, can log into our process control system and troubleshoot performance issues.”
The per-user cost is about $13 a month per seat, with about 75 users, and a six-year cumulative cost analysis shows hosted services work out to about $338,000, compared to $1,942,000 for an in-house solution.
Also in this issue:
Are you using cloud computing?
What cloud computing and social media tools bring to corporate Canada
Better, faster, stronger: Productivity gains edge out cost as key cloud benefit
Cloud Computing Supplement: Soaring upwards with cloud communications
VoIP Supplement: Moving to modern cloud-based communications
Cloud Computing blog
