Innate Financial Services Group undertook a major cloud migration to establish a platform on which the business could thrive and grow. Directors Shane Nicholas and Mirko Cugura share their experience and the benefits they are now enjoying since embracing the cloud.
Innate Financial Services Group (IFSG) is an accounting and wealth management firm on a mission to build better lives for their clients. After acquiring another accounting firm, the group found themselves in need of a flexible and mobile I.T. solution that would enable their 20-strong workforce to deliver their trusted services from multiple locations. With a server replacement also on the horizon, the group’s forward-thinking directors recognised an ideal opportunity to shift away from a traditional, static IT setup which has a limited life-span and embrace a solution that could grow with the business, provide the mobility they required and compliment the web-based applications they were already using.
The search for a purpose-built solution lead IFSG to discussions with Zynet around the cloud and the benefits it could bring to their organisation. “The notion of ‘the cloud’ was not foreign to us, but we were curious to know what it actually meant and how we could use it in our business” explains IFSG director, Shane Nicholas.
Zynet consulted with IFSG closely to understand their requirements and map-out the options that were available to them. “We had a great sense of confidence that the things we were asking for were being listened to and that we were being offered options and solutions that were reflective of what we were asking for,” Nicholas remarks. Co-director Mirko Cugura adds “we felt that the advice Zynet was giving had our best interests at heart and that was really important”.
With a thorough grasp of IFSG’s needs, wants and aspirations, Zynet designed and implemented a full public cloud solution, hosted within the Microsoft Azure environment. The project involved transitioning IFSG’s entire business operations to the cloud hence removing the need to store and maintain any physical infrastructure in their office. “Taking the server off-premise was a big call by the business” comments Cugura, “it really required a mind-set shift… but when it came down to security the cloud really was the place to be.” Nicholas agrees, “the concept of cloud brings with it a perception of risk but when we asked ourselves if our data was safer in a fully maintained data centre or in a server room in our office, the honest answer was the data centre – it provides a much greater degree of risk management for our business.”
Crucial to the success of the project was clear and regular communication between Zynet and IFSG. “Zynet did a great job in delivering regular updates about each item so we always had an understanding about where the project was at” says Nicholas. Similarly, Zynet dealt with any challenges throughout the project in a timely and pragmatic way, as Nicholas testifies “there was never a point in time that there was a challenge that was left hanging to our detriment. It was challenge. Solution. Fix. Which was terrific.”
Business continuity was extremely important to IFSG and Zynet was able to execute the cloud migration with little, if any, disruption to the business. “If you had asked our clients they would have had no idea the project was being undertaken as it was business a normal through our offices,” says Cugura. Ironically, though, it is IFSG’s clients who are the major benefactors from the cloud move, as Nicholas points out “if they [clients] are not able to get to our location, then being able to go to them and having the tools we need to service them is particularly appealing”.
ISFG did not set out to radically change the fundamental operations of the business. Rather the project was about enabling the business to be more flexible and more mobile. Additionally, it was about ‘future-proofing’ the business by establishing a platform on which it can grow and adjust resources accordingly. Cugura highlights the benefits of the move, “we are now on a platform that allows us to make changes very quickly without having to worry about I.T. being an issue. If we want to ramp up the business, add employees, reduce them, open another premise, go interstate, even international, it doesn’t matter! That’s a nice position to be in for the business.” He offers the following advice to other businesses considering a similar move to the cloud: “Be very clear as a business of what you are trying to achieve and make sure your IT partner has a good understanding of that. You are in this together. We were very comfortable we had the right partner in our business with Zynet.”
See the full interview with Shane and Mirko