Gen-i cloud takes New Zealand Oil Services into the future

Gen-i cloud takes New Zealand Oil Services into the future

AUCKLAND, 09 August 2012 – An infrastructure-as-a-service solution from Gen-i has enabled NZ Oil Services to become more agile, efficient and competitive.

With ageing infrastructure that was coming to the end of its useful life, New Zealand Oil Services were looking for options that would set the company up for the future.

“Our IT equipment was about 10 years old and the warranty for one of the main servers had expired,” says Business Support Analyst Karin Pieck. “We were in a position where we needed to look at upgrading our infrastructure.”

The requirement for a new solution was to “basically bring us back into modern day technology,” says Pieck.

The organisation also needed a new platform for improving other parts of the business, for example upgrading its telephone system, and preparing for the rollout of a document management system.

NZ Oil Services initially investigated replacing its servers but found that to be very costly. One of the organisation’s shareholder companies already had a relationship with Gen-i and recommended the ICT services provider.

Gen-i proposed moving to a cloud-based solution on its ReadyCloud Server infrastructure-as-a-service platform.

NZ Oil Services soon determined this option would be more cost-effective than buying new servers, and would set the company up for future improvements, says Pieck.

“It was pretty much a ‘big bang’ approach. We switched off one service provider and shifted to the other. We moved all our data and all Exchange mailboxes over. It was done over a weekend to minimise the impact on the business and went really well. The guys from Gen-i were brilliant in handling it. They were available pretty much 24/7. Gen-i’s after sales support has also been really good.”

All standard business applications, networks, servers and databases are now managed in the cloud. Gen-i also manages email, web and desktop security for the company.

As part of the shift to the cloud, all NZ Oil Services locations were upgraded with new PCs and laptops.

Since moving to the hosted environment the company has become more agile, says Pieck. All 55 staff across its nine sites are now on the same environment with easy access to the information they need to do their jobs.

Pieck and the team can now manage the system themselves, via an easy-to-use interface, rather than relying on a service provider to do it for them.

“ReadyCloud Server gives our team the flexibility to set-up and manage our own virtual machines via an easy-to-use interface, rather than relying on a service provider. We can create a test environment for new applications within hours, without having to invest in expensive equipment, allowing us to rollout new services quickly and cost effectively,” said Pieck.

“The new self-management tools in ReadyCloud Server will give us better cost control by allowing us to turn services on and off without logging service requests, so we only pay for the resources we need, when we need them.

But the real benefits are going to be the long-term ones,” Pieck says. “This is just the start of the plan to move to a more modern workspace.”

NZ Oil Services are currently in the process of rolling out an upgrade to their entire telephony system, using the network for voice-over-IP to reduce costs. With modern features – such as presence, which allows you to see if someone is available and send them a quick message instead of starting an email exchange – the organisation is expecting to see significant productivity gains.

The company also plans to implement a document management system, which will allow shareholders and some external consultants to access the relevant information they need, whenever they need it, via a web interface.

“For shareholders, sometimes the frustration has been that they can’t access the data they would like to see,” says Pieck.

In addition, staff will get web and smartphone access to their email. All these changes will result in a more efficiently run organisation and will give the company a competitive advantage, says Pieck.

In the future, staff will be able to work from home, do more video-conferencing, stay in touch with the business and keep working when travelling.

“And once we bring in fibre, the user experience for our staff will be completely seamless,” says Pieck. “Up until now, I could only dream of these things.”
ENDS

About New Zealand Oil Services
NZ Oil Services Limited (NZOSL) provides terminal services to its shareholders at various locations within New Zealand. Its function is the receipt of petroleum products, storage and handing operations and the maintenance of those assets. The facilities are enabled to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which facilitates the distribution of products to the shareholders’ customers.

NZOSL has around 55 staff and operates at nine sites, including at ports, such as Mt Maunganui, Napier, New Plymouth, Lower Hutt, Nelson, Lyttelton, Dunedin and Timaru. The NZOSL head office is in Wellington.
About Gen-i
Gen-i is at the forefront of helping customers take advantage of the convergence of technology and telecommunications, and the new opportunities this makes possible. Gen-i works alongside its 2,700 corporate, government and business customers to deliver seamless hosted and integrated ICT solutions. A member of the Telecom New Zealand Group, Gen-i achieves this with the support of 2,500 highly skilled people in 19 locations across New Zealand and Australia. For more information on Gen-i, visit www.gen-i.co.nz

© Scoop Media