Cloud cover for the Small Business (Mooncomputers Case Study)

Overview – The changing landscape for SMEs
Based in Northampton, Mooncomputers are a leading provider of small & medium sized business IT support and services. The company has been providing IT operations to the SME community, across a variety of verticals, for over ten years.

Mooncomputers aims to provide its customers with a one-stop-shop for all its IT needs, including IT Support, Cloud Computing, Internet Connectivity and Office Supplies. Using a range of carefully sourced partnerships, Mooncomputers offers services that can be tailored to the specific needs of the customers. 

With a shift in today’s customer requirements, Mooncomputers were looking to partner with a proven hosted services provider who could supply Cloud Computing at the highest level, which would allow their customers to scale their IT services depending on usage. The key for Mooncomputers is the proposed partner needed to have the flexibility to cater for specific needs at a cost effective price whilst providing a “best in class” service that is supported by a very competent back room support team. Through an existing relationship Mooncomputers were introduced to Rise, a provider of Cloud Computing and hosted services.

Challenge – Rethinking the IT infrastructure
Seeing the acceptance of Cloud Computing becoming more apparent in industry, Mooncomputers started a new sister company Mooncloud led by Technical Sales Director Andy Prideaux, a part of the “Moon Group”, to focus on Cloud Services provision encompassing Mooncomputers existing and new hosted solutions which are now hosted on the Rise platform. Mooncloud customers are supported by the Mooncomputers support team that is assisted by the Rise Technical Team.
 
The current economic climate has meant that a lot of firms have been forced to rethink their IT infrastructures and for the Moon Group, and its customers, this is no different.

Traditionally, Moon Group serves SMBs by helping to manage IT operations depending on their particular requirements. For many SMBs, IT maintenance and upkeep can be a time consuming process. In particular as data levels increase and budgets tighten, many firms are seeking an IT infrastructure that allows easy advancements in growth and adaptation to current and future needs with an affordable financial commitment. This was the case for one of Moon Groups customers, Bis Henderson.

Bis Henderson, a high end Supply Chain Recruitment specialists firm, approached the Moon Group over concerns it had with its IT network, regarding performance and scalability issues. The company was running three servers all from its Northampton base, however, with poor connectivity between London, Northampton and remote users, the need for a more fluid robust and upgradeable system became apparent, After a consultation period with the Moon Group, a full site survey report and analysis was conducted and from this it was recommended that all three servers be moved to a Cloud based platform to increase performance, reliability and future proofing. The Moon Group then addressed the task of identifying a partner who could provide them with a flexible Cloud solution that could provide a reliable, robust, scalable and cost effective platform, Bis Henderson are now running their IT infrastructure within the cloud and seeing improvements from their old system which allows them to provide their customers a prompt and efficient service whilst allowing them the option to upgrade (or downgrade) for cost efficiency at any time and the adjustments can be made within a very short time scale.

According to Harry Bird, CEO of the Moon Group, Rise were the stand out partner of choice: “Like so many of our customers, the upkeep of an IT system can be a real strain on a business. Major barriers for SMBs are that they don’t have the necessary expertises in IT to make the relevant upgrades or in some cases downgrades depending on their needs. They are therefore looking to us to take that headache away. With this in mind, we needed a partner who could provide a flexible hosted IT platform that had the capability to be tailored to meet the needs not only of our customers but also incorporate future upgrades or changes.”

Solution – Putting Clouds on the Moon
Rise provides Cloud Computing and hosted IT services to a variety of customers, who rely on its web-hosting services and DataCenter-on- Demand™ (DCoD) platform. Through Rises’ DCoD platform, the Moon Group and its customers were able to easily migrate their IT infrastructure into the Cloud with opportunities for further upgrades in the future depending on usage. Rise were able to provide functions such as backup, Microsoft Exchange and other operations including hosted applications and web services, which could all be migrated into the Cloud, giving full manageability to the Moon Group. In addition, the Moon Group needed to ensure that whomever it partnered with were able to provide the levels of flexibility needed to cater for specific needs, as well as ensuring total security of all data, with no capital expenditure and no hidden charges.

Benefits – Cloud clears the skies for SMEs
Through Rise, the Moon Group has benefited from being able to offer a flexible, robust and cost effective white label platform that can be tailored to the specific needs of its customers. Customers are now able to increase their server specifications instantly on request without the hassle of buying new equipment. Using Rises’ offering, users will be able to meet demands and scaling up or down depending on usage. Also, in terms of growth the platform allows users to increase server capacity depending on data level volumes enabling customers to expand its server and hardware capacity, making it a cost effective and flexible option. The other benefits include:

•    An on-demand IT infrastructure that allows users to increase IT resources, such as processing power and network storage, easily as and when you need to
•    The ability to increase or decrease server capabilities when you need to. This gives you an agile server infrastructure that always meets the demands of your business
•    Ability to offer a white label solution that can be tailored to specific needs

Bird concluded: “When we first started our partnership with Rise one of the things that most impressed us were the levels of attentiveness. In the Moon Group, flexibility is key to our customers. We attract a wide array of customers who come to us with a variety of requirements and a range of budgets. In order to meet these demands we needed a partner who could be flexible; Rise provides this level of flexibility and more. They were quick to understand our service needs and tune into the wants of our customer, as well as being open to discussing ways in which we could increase our value added services.”