Albion Scaccia Enables Constant Access to Business Data While Reducing IT Overhead with Microsoft Office 365 and Cloud|AG Managed Services Featuring DocAve Online
Success Highlights
Customer Location Atlanta, GA
Industry Construction
Platform Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft 365, SharePoint Online
Critical Needs
- Access to business data at all times with reduced dependency on on-premises servers
- Quick recovery of lost or corrupted documents or mailboxes in Office 365
- Simplified management and reporting on security settings and permissions throughout Office 365 environment
The Challenge
Though Albion Scaccia runs its primary operations out of its Atlanta headquarters, nearly half of the company’s employee base often works at its customers’ construction sites. This makes connectivity a necessity for communication within the company. Previously, the company relied upon an on-premises instance of Microsoft Exchange hosted on servers in house and collaborated primarily through email and local file shares.
However, Albion Scaccia experienced an incident in 2013 where its server went down for three full business days. During that time, employees could access neither email nor the file share folders where they stored documents, posing a major challenge to business operations and overall productivity. “Losing email and file share access was a critical issue for us,” said Brian Newsome, Albion Scaccia Co-Founder and Executive Vice President. “Right then, we determined we could never be in that situation again.”
In order to prevent future outages, Albion Scaccia turned to AvePoint partner Cloud|AG. The company was interested in moving to a cloud-based solution – specifically Microsoft Office 365, which boasted a 99.9 percent annual uptime. “When searching cloud-based solutions that matched our business needs and offset the processing from our local servers, Office 365, ServicePoint365, and Cloud|AG’s managed services with AvePoint Online Services was the perfect combination of products and services to meet our needs,” Newsome said.
Co-Founder and Executive Vice President, Albion Scaccia
The AvePoint Solution
With Cloud|AG’s assistance, Albion Scaccia migrated its company email and documents to Office 365, which also included Cloud|AG’s application ServicePoint365. ServicePoint365 is an industry template application developed for Office 365 – SharePoint Online designed to support the collaboration and content management needs of project-centric organizations, individuals, and teams. In addition to eliminating risk of downtime, the solution allowed Albion Scaccia cost savings in the area of IT support resources, which it outsourced through another company. “Office 365 and ServicePoint365 allow us to carry out all of our field operations and store data in the cloud, providing access at all times,” Newsome said. “The fact that we could eliminate all local servers aside from print servers reduced our dependency on IT support for server maintenance and upgrades.”
Albion Scaccia also enjoys a level of mobility that it never had with file shares. When field supervisors are on site at jobs, they can now use their phones and tablets to easily access the latest versions of documents through SharePoint Online. “Better access to information on the job is a great benefit to our field supervisors,” Newsome said. “Carrying a tablet with up-to-date information is easier than armfuls of blueprints.”
To manage and protect Albion Scaccia’s Office 365 and ServicePoint365 environment, Cloud|AG utilizes AvePoint Online Services. Hosted on Microsoft Azure, AvePoint Online Services (AOS) is a SaaS platform that empowers organizations to extend cloud computing as business needs dictate by providing capabilities including management, protection, synchronization, and reporting. “AOS is a unique tool in the marketplace, as it allows us as a trusted partner to provide necessary managed services for Albion Scaccia’s environment,” said Cloud|AG President and CEO David Huseonica. “No other solution gives us the capability to operate these kinds of services on behalf of our clients.”
AOS allows Cloud|AG to protect all of Albion Scaccia’s SharePoint Online data with granular content backup and recovery to quickly restore lost or corrupt documents and sites, eliminating the threat of downtime for any of the company’s business-critical data. “While Microsoft provides Albion Scaccia with the confidence that their environment can be accessed at all times, AOS allows us to cater to the individual,” Huseonica said. “If a user needs to restore a document or site that has been lost or corrupted, we can do so within an hour for them through DocAve Online, eliminating any significant business disruption.”
The Road Ahead
With its business data hosted in the cloud through Office 365 and ServicePoint365 and managed by Cloud|AG with AOS, Albion Scaccia enabled its employees to collaborate better through uninterrupted access to content both in and out of the office. Moving forward, Cloud|AG will utilize AOS to manage and report on security settings and permissions across the Office 365 and ServicePoint365 environment, giving visibility into who has access to what and allowing changes to be made easily to ensure the system meets organizational governance policies. “Utilizing cloud-based collaboration technologies such as Office 365 and ServicePoint365 along with Cloud|AG’s managed services with AOS allows us to access data more reliably and work more efficiently than ever before, which ultimately benefits our customers,” Newsome said. “We pitch this as a strategic advantage in interviews with prospective clients.”