Power Electronics NZ
Leveraging Microsoft 365 services to rationalise IT infrastructure, reduce costs and improve functionality.
Power Electronics specialises in variable speed drives, soft starters, solar inverters, battery energy storage system inverters, STATCOM, and electric vehicle chargers. With offices in Christchurch and Napier, we've partnered with them for 15 years, providing ongoing IT support and management services. Leveraging this partnership, we identified aging server issues and proposed strategies to enhance IT service delivery while reducing infrastructure and management costs.
The challenge
Power Electronics had relied on their existing physical server for five years, which hosted two virtual servers. However, due to the aging physical infrastructure, it was evident that a replacement was necessary.
These virtual servers played a vital role in Power Electronics' operations, providing essential services such as user authentication, file sharing, and accounting.
While the company was open to improving and modifying their IT infrastructure, they had specific operational requirements for their accounting platform that could not be changed.
Our solution
After conducting our information discovery, we found opportunities to streamline Power Electronics' internal IT services. We also explored the feasibility of replacing their accounting system with a vendor SaaS (software as a solution) service.
Our proposal involved moving their authentication and file sharing services to Microsoft 365, further leveraging their existing subscriptions. We suggested replacing their physical server, eliminating two virtual servers, and reducing costs. As a cloud-based accounting solution wasn't available, the physical server would solely run their accounting system.
The plan offered significant benefits for our client:
- Improved functionality, including the ability to share files externally, multi-user editing of files, remote access to files from mobiles and computers without needing a VPN, and file versioning for easy review and restore of past versions.
- Reduced server count: By consolidating infrastructure, we reduced their server count from three to one. This led to lower managed server monthly charges, decreased support requirements, and reduced backup and antivirus software licensing needs.
The successful implementation simplified their IT setup, decreased operating costs, and increased system functionality. They met their current accounting system requirements whilst also leaving the path open for the future addition of more cloud-based solutions.
Power Electronics NZ have entrusted iTops to provide our IT services and support for over 15 years. iTops have been an integral part of our journey from a start-up company to becoming the leading power inverter supplier in the NZ market. Our most recent project took that to a higher level again where we removed all our own servers and shifted the business almost entirely to the cloud in an effort to ensure IT resilience and to make sure we were operating as efficiently as possible. iTops managed the project from scope to implementation and it has been a complete success that will serve us well for the future.
Whether it’s taking care of your everyday IT needs or you have a challenge to solve, we can help.
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