No business in the world can afford IT downtime. Yet the reality is that most are forced to anyway—both in their day-to-day operations and when transitioning to a new system. In fact, nearly 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies experience a minimum of 1.6 hours of downtime per week, according to Dunn & Bradstreet.
The costs of downtime can be staggering. According to one survey, more than $26.5 billion in revenue is lost to IT downtime each year—and those are just the financial costs. Downtime can also severely harm staff morale, customer loyalty, and a company’s long-term reputation.
Having no downtime is especially critical for a customer like Catalogic Software, which delivers data protection and cataloging solutions to clients around the world. Last year, the company found itself in an unusual position: It already had a mature client base, yet it was spinning off as a separate company from Syncsort and needed to implement its own IT infrastructure just as if it were a startup. The bottom line was that Catalogic couldn’t tolerate any disruption to its existing customers while building out its underlying infrastructure.
To lower capital expenses and the burden on its small IT staff, Catalogic decided to move many systems to the cloud. In the end, it chose Microsoft Office 365 for employee productivity, hosted Exchange for email, and Syvantis GP Online, a version of the Microsoft Dynamics GP financial system that runs in the Microsoft Azure cloud and is managed by partner Syvantis Technologies. James Farrell of Catalogic says, “We want to build out an infrastructure that can be agile and take advantage of new technology. To us, this means moving applications to the cloud whenever it makes sense.”
The transition proved a success. Working with Syvantis, Catalogic migrated all of the company’s financial data from Syncsort’s on-premises Microsoft Dynamics GP into the cloud in a single weekend. As James Farrell, Sr. Manager of Software Services, put it, “We have zero tolerance for downtime. And in the end there was no downtime. There was no disruption to the business.”
Not only did Catalogic avoid downtime by choosing Syvantis GP Online, but it is ensuring its business continuity on an ongoing basis. “When you look at what we’re paying for versus what we get in terms of resiliency, it’s very good,” says Farrell. “Having the comfort of a global data center offers huge value—and huge peace of mind.”
While peace of mind is a great benefit, the advantages haven’t stopped there. Security is a key priority for the company as it works to protect sensitive information. Working with Syvantis, Catalogic is taking full advantage of the enterprise-level security features of both Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Azure. In addition, using Syvantis GP Online has saved the company in infrastructure and maintenance costs. And the transition has been nearly transparent to Catalogic’s financial staff, who rely on the familiar features of Microsoft Dynamics GP every day for their accounting needs. Farrell says, “If performance suffered, we would hear about it. But there’s been no noticeable difference between the on-premises and the hosted version.”
Catalogic’s experience with Microsoft Dynamics GP is great example of the kind of advantages that Syvantis is working hard to provide to all of our customers. Having made a smooth transition, Catalogic can now extend the sophisticated financial tools of Microsoft Dynamics GP to its employees across the globe with the safety and stability of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. It’s a great win for any company seeking to expand its global presence!
To learn more, please read the entire Catalogic Software case study or Take a guided tour of our accounting software for small and midsized businesses.