C&S Companies (C&S), founded in 1968, has more than 500 employees and provides engineering, architecture, planning, environmental and construction services to clients through a 14 office, distributed network stretching from California to New York. C&S provides services to local, state, and federal governments; industry and manufacturing; and private business.
C&S companies operates across 14 different offices and has 500 employees, many who work off-site and need data in the field. The company has employed a variety of solutions including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), VPNs and desktop as a service (DaaS) to help off-site employees stay connected. While these solutions performed adequately for in-office employees, off campus employees and partner companies that needed access to graphics-heavy files and design applications like AutoDesk AutoCAD and Revit were experiencing performance issues stemming from high network latency. While there were DaaS solutions on the market, they didn’t provide the global file locking that C&S required in order to eliminate file versioning and data integrity issues. C&S realized that in order to eliminate these concerns, the entire company and their partners had to be able to access and work on the the same set of consistent data.
After success with Panzura’s Global File System, C&S adopted Panzura’s new SkyBridge product to connect offsite employees and partners through cloud-based VDI that connected securely to key applications and project files. SkyBridge is the only solution that connects to the public cloud and makes it look and operate exactly like it’s part of an on-premise data center. Data and applications run in the cloud the same way as in the datacenter without any changes - all connected to a corporate infrastructure without the need for specialized solutions. The global locking file system gives users fast, local access to the same, consistent data no matter where they are, without any changes to the user experience.
After deploying Panzura, latency was eliminated and file opens, saves and syncs that used to take 20 to 30 minutes now took less than 10 seconds. With the implementation of SkyBridge, engineers and partners can collaborate in real-time on project files, whether they’re in an office or in the field, boosting productivity and reducing time to job completion. Previously, employees in remote locations were resigned to work on day-old copies of project data, often resulting in lost work and lost time as they tried to merge different file versions. Now with SkyBridge they were able to instantly update files and work together in real-time. Thanks to Panzura’s global file locking, they no longer needed to worry about managing different versions or overwriting each other’s files.
End users also noticed immediate differences without altering their workflow. Application integration went smoothly, including Revit, Civil 3D, and Bentley MicroStation, amongst others. With Panzura SkyBridge, C&S was able to ensure that both their on-site and off-site workers felt as though they were working out of the same building and on the same file data.
Immediately, by working with Panzura and using the Global File System, C&S was able to eliminate latency and achieve more than a 150x performance improvement. Even in initial testing, file opens, saves, and syncs were reduced dramatically from 22 minutes to 8 seconds. The total data storage footprint across 16 sites went from 114TB down to 11TB, thanks to Panzura’s efficient deduplication and use of the cloud to eliminate reduant storage across sites.
Another benefit that C&S achieved by deploying SkyBridge was inherent data protection from cloud redundancy and the ability to store up to 10,000 snapshots of their project data. They can now easily go back in time to retrieve files, much like the Apple “Time Machine.” Today, C&S spends less than $400 per month for all tiers of storage across all sites and expects that number to decrease as cloud storage pricing follows Moore’s Law.
C&S uses VMware View in their datacenter and runs Citrix XenDesktop in the cloud, all tied in to the same Panzura Global File System with Amazon S3 cloud storage. Without Panzura, they wouldn’t be able to connect their datacenter to the cloud, or mesh two different VDI solutions (Citrix and VMware).
Panzura’s solutions are changing the face of the cloud storage and VDI industry. Specifically, in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry, Panzura has enabled users to collaborate on large files like never before. Panzura’s file locking technology enables BIM (building information modeling) and CAD file sharing and eliminating the need for broken-up and multiple versions of project files. Panzura SkyBridge extends that same capability to the public cloud and lets companies run virtual desktops in any location, all connected back to their corporate infrastructure. That makes it possible for workers on and off-site to work of the same set of data so that they can work together like they’re in the same location. In today’s global world, companies need to be able to work efficiently with employees and partners in distributed locations.
Panzura has enabled C&S engineers in any office work to work on any project at anytime. In doing so, they’re able to achieve more than $100,000 in infrastructure savings per year as well as keep their billable time higher. C&S is also able to pull in expertise as-needed from any office, letting them deliver the highest quality projects to their clients in a timely manner.
