Orchard Warehousing and Cold Storage offer temperature-controlled logistics solutions to the dairy and food industry across Ireland. Since starting up in Glanmire in 1996, the company has expanded to a bigger facility in Carrigtwohill and now employs 16 people. The transporting of goods involves processing documentation efficiently and a constant transfer of information. The business is very reliant on technology running smoothly and relies heavily on warehouse management software which is popular in the logistics industry, In-DEX (Principal Systems). As a long-standing client of Radius, Orchard Warehousing reached out to discuss a change in their server infrastructure.
The Challenge
The first motivation for moving to the cloud was reliability. In the logistics industry, a product can’t be moved if the processing system is down, and workers are left hanging around waiting for the system to be back online.
“We’re effectively dead in the water when that happens. Servers were becoming creaky, and hiccups were becoming more frequent,” says Eoin Hennessy, Managing Director of Orchard Warehousing.
The business was squeezing a lot out of their existing technology. They knew that a switch from on-premise servers to the cloud could offer enhanced reliability.
The company also saw a move to the cloud as an opportunity to get ahead of the looming challenge of Brexit. They had noticed a significant increase in paperwork requirements, in particular relating to customs and the Irish Revenue. While the burden has not been too much to bear up until now, with much of the economy shut down due to COVID, they foresee a need for more efficient processing of increased documentation in the near future.
The final push for the business to move to the security of a cloud-based server was a ransomware attack. Although the company got off lightly, and Radius were able to recover their systems quickly, they knew that it could never happen again and that they needed to have the best in class IT security protection.
“Only for the attack, our move to the cloud would have taken a lot longer. It really brought home the risks of not having enterprise-level protection that a Cloud solution provides,” says Eoin.
The Solution
Radius’ Regional Director for Cork, Kevin O’Regan, adds, “the benefits of a move to the cloud for Orchard Warehousing and Cold Storage were profound. As a business that is 100% reliant on their stock management system, a cloud solution delivered the very best in tech, without the headache of updates or maintenance. This coupled with a sense of security and reliability meant total peace of mind for the client”.
Radius’ capable team are what sealed the deal for Eoin. For any small problems that are encountered by the business, Radius’ helpdesk provides a prompt and impressive service.
According to Eoin, the transition to the cloud with Radius Technologies was absolutely seamless: “It was very impressive as far as we were concerned, it was business as usual, and there was no downtime which affected the running of operations.”
“That’s where the confidence comes from,” he says, “being able to speak in a straightforward language that you can understand, to someone you know, is invaluable. I couldn’t fault them. They are pro-active and quick to understand any issues, as well as always bringing forward cost-effective solutions. We are kept in the loop regarding the progress of fixes, and people like Dylan on the helpdesk are very impressive.”
For more on how a move to the cloud for uptime and security can benefit your organisation, email sales@radius.ie or lo-call 0818 592 500.
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