Cloud Enablement for Manufacturing Company

Created a Cloud Enablement Roadmap™ for a Large Chicago-Based Manufacturing Company Specializing in Custom Commercial LED Lighting and Design

“Our company has a clear vision for our future in IT with Storcom’s Cloud Enablement Roadmap™.” – CIO of a Large Chicagoland Manufacturing Company Specializing in Custom Commercial LED Lighting and Design.

a. Business Challenges:

Storcom’s client, a large manufacturing company, faced looming infrastructure upgrades for their current on-premises compute and storage needs. Additionally, they wanted to provide better availability for their business and the applications that IT was responsible for hosting. Our client felt that moving their applications to the public cloud was the best long-term strategy.  This client gained the greatest flexibility and scalability by allowing their business to evolve with changing requirements and investing in the right network infrastructure upgrades. This business was going also through hyper-growth.

They also faced a very unique set of challenges on top of the normal considerations companies encounter when migrating to the cloud because they are a manufacturer. The physical element of manufacturing changes the dynamic of how applications will communicate. This occurs with devices like handheld scanners when applications are moved off-premises.

The number of legacy applications that needed to be upgraded and rewritten as cloud-native during the same time period was another challenge. This added to the complexity of our project.

b. Storcom’s Solution

Storcom was hired to build a three-year cloud migration strategy leveraging our Cloud Enablement Roadmap™. Storcom evaluated legacy applications that could be rewritten as cloud-native. We also looked at the main ERP system which could not initially be ported to cloud-native. Therefore, it needed to be moved off-prem with a “lift and shift” model. Storcom also evaluated how all of these applications interacted, including the CAD systems the designers use. Storcom next evaluated how applications will be moved to the public cloud and what the costs look like as that migration occurred because of the complex interactions between on-prem and off-prem devices.

c. Results

Storcom is now providing a strategy for our client’s evolution to cloud computing by executing our Cloud Enablement Roadmap™. Storcom conducts major upgrades to the client’s network in order to provide the necessary resiliency since core applications will now be hosted in a public cloud. We are also rebuilding legacy applications as cloud-native. Storcom is additionally providing the initial development environment for the current ERP system. This will be migrated into the public cloud after full testing. This organization is reaping the benefits of this strategy already. There is now a concise understanding of what their strategy will be over the next three years to ultimately enable the CIO’s vision of the direction of the company.

d. Tools/Solutions Utilized

Storcom implemented our patented Cloud Enablement Roadmap™ offering for this project. This solution consists of unique consulting methodology along with a set of industry-standard and custom tools that collect data.