Engineering Firm Avoids Costs and Improves Productivity with Microsoft Hosted Services

In today’s post we hear from Zyvex Technologies on why Microsoft hosted services, including SharePoint Online and Office 365, were the best selections for their business in their move to cloud computing!

“We decided on cloud-based services from Microsoft, because employees can take full advantage of the Outlook client, and it offered us a robust implementation that would require minimal administration on our part” --Byron Nutley, Vice President of Business Operations, Zyvex Technologies

Zyvex Technologies
Zyvex, the world's first molecular nanotechnology company, was founded near Dallas, Texas, in 1997. Ten years later Zyvex Technologies was spun out, and relocated its headquarters to Columbus, Ohio to focus on developing stronger, lighter, nano-enhanced materials technology. The company employs more than 50 people and has offices in Bothell, Washington, Richardson, Texas, and Rapid City, South Dakota, in addition to its headquarters in Columbus.

IT Challenges
After splitting from Zyvex in 2007, the company planned for its teams in Bothell and Columbus to focus on separate areas and operate autonomously. For messaging, each division had its own domain and engaged its own third-party IT service to help it deploy a solution to support employees. Due to configuration and domain resolution issues, employees experienced problems exchanging messages between offices. Messages were lost in transit, and employees in Bothell had to switch between using the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client and Outlook Web App, depending on a message’s destination. Byron Nutley, Vice President of Business Operations at Zyvex Technologies, explains, “We realized we needed to re-architect our entire messaging solution to resolve this issue, which would cost us a fair bit of time and money.”

IT Solution and Benefits
To resolve its messaging issues, the company originally considered using Google Mail. “We pretty quickly ruled out Google, since employees could not work offline with their apps,” says Nutley. “We decided on cloud-based services from Microsoft, because employees can take full advantage of the Outlook client, and it offered us a robust implementation that would require minimal administration on our part.”

Zyvex Technologies joined the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program for Microsoft Office 365, which combines the familiar Office desktop suite with cloud-based communications and collaboration services. In a few short weeks, the company resolved two of its major challenges by using Office 365. First, it created accounts and employee mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange Online, which is based on Exchange Server 2010 technology, so that employees have the latest messaging capabilities. Second, as part of its Office 365 subscription, Zyvex Technologies provided Microsoft Office Professional Plus to its employees, so they now all use the same version of Office. In addition, employees will automatically receive Office upgrades as they become available, so the company does not have to worry that versions will be out of sync.

Zyvex Technologies also plans to use Microsoft SharePoint Online to boost collaboration. “With SharePoint Online, we can build project sites with common collections of documents,” says Nutley. “That way, people can go directly to the project site and get what they need.” By using SharePoint Online, the company also sees the opportunity to simplify and improve workflow processes. Understand how Zyvex is benefitting from Microsoft online services through this video:

Zyvex Technologies is using the advanced diagramming tools in Microsoft Visio Premium 2010 in concert with Visio Services, which is a key feature in SharePoint Online, to help monitor inventory. Nutley says, “We are using Visio 2010 to connect to SharePoint Online and get a real-time view of stock levels for materials. We use this to help with inventory management for the production schedule.” The company can easily share live, visual representations of changes to production schedules and inventory levels.

Because Zyvex Technologies can customize its Office 365 subscriptions to provide only the capabilities employees need to do their jobs, it can more easily control costs. “As a small company, the ability to provide only what people need through Office 365 is a huge advantage for us,” says Nutley. “As opposed to a large rollout expense for on-premises solutions, we have a more manageable, smaller monthly cost.” In addition, because Microsoft manages the infrastructure, Zyvex Technologies can reduce its costs for IT consultants.
 
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