Recently, ATCO Australia began looking at updating the on-premises OpenText solution. The company wanted to leverage the latest functionality of the OpenText™ Extended ECM Platform without the cost and resources required to maintain the solution in-house. Marshall described the critical elements required of OpenText: “We had to be sure that OpenText was capable, that the environment would be secure, and of course, that they could support our business to the level that it had been used to, if not better. We also needed the ability to, in the future, integrate with other systems, such as Office 365.” He concluded, “We realized the move to OpenText™ Cloud Managed Services was the only option if we wanted to do what we set out to do—get the appropriate levels of support and not have to manage the environment.”
Leaving it to the experts
OpenText Cloud Managed Services provides deployment, integration, management, and optimization of information management applications like Extended ECM Platform, in a cloud infrastructure, with managed services operations. Marshall summarized the benefits: “With OpenText Cloud Managed Services, we no longer have to maintain infrastructure, and we no longer have to worry about upgrades and patches. Essentially, we’re using a service to access our documents in a document management system, but we don’t have to look after it ourselves. In the past, we had to constantly be upgrading it, applying patches, replacing hardware, infrastructure, and so on. The hassle of maintaining IT infrastructure is now gone.”
The timing of the initiative coincided with the remote work requirements of the Covid-19 pandemic. Marshall explained that this provided an unintended boost to cloud strategy discussions. “The fact that everyone was working remotely, that we were moving applications into the cloud, and that we were telling them they would be able to access those documents from anywhere, on any device—I think that helped when we put the business case in front of them. They didn’t hesitate.”
Due to pandemic restrictions, the rollout of the solution also took place remotely. Nevertheless, from a project delivery standpoint, there was no disruption or delay. Marshall noted, “Since we went live, we have not had one complaint about the system. We got it all done according to the project plan and schedule, almost to the day. The amount of collaboration was remarkable. It was one of those rare projects that actually just goes according to plan.”
Marshall noted that the success of the initiative was due in no small part to trusted partner Hayes Information Systems. The team’s initial project planning took place with Hayes, who recommended the eventual solution and facilitated discussions with OpenText. In fact, ATCO relied on Hayes’ expertise and knowledge of OpenText products throughout the project. Hayes remains onboard, providing local product support and acting as a valuable interface between ATCO and OpenText. “OpenText is lucky to have a business partner like Hayes because they’re just focused on doing the right thing by the customer,” said Marshall.