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1 Telarus IaaS Case Study - FM Innovations Below we detail the success story that has seen Telarus join forces with FM Innovations one of Australia s leading facility management software companies. You will see how our private cloud solution helped FMI expand their offerings to new markets, provide better services to their existing markets and lower costs. Company profile FMI is a leading Australian facility management software company, delivering solutions in Property and Facility Management through their flagship software packages WSMenterprise and WSMindustrial. We looked at the company s commercial and technological challenges and worked together to find innovative and enduring solutions, as detailed below. FM Innovations Overview FMI was established in 1997 and have since become a leading Australian facility management software company, delivering solutions in Property and Facility Management through their flagship software packages WSMenterprise and WSMindustrial. These are sophisticated, yet easy-to-use preventative maintenance software solutions that make the increasingly complex FM industry more manageable. FMI work with large corporates and State Government agencies nationally. The Challenges FMI identified growth opportunities for developing software for new markets. They also saw opportunities for making their flagship software packages more accessible to their existing target market of corporates, educational institutions and government bodies. The problem was that most of their market didn t have the cost-effective, scalable and elastic infrastructure necessary to support their new software; so they were

2 Quick response deployment within a short period of time was the goal Telarus nursed us through the learning process. This has radically changed FMI s business model. FM Innovations unable to really penetrate new markets in new ways. Or as Kristiana Greenwood, Director of FMI said: We always sold to the big end of town. The Challenge in Existing Markets When evaluating FM software like FMI s, corporations tended to characterise it as non-core software. So they were reluctant to implement and host this within their existing hosting environment; in fact they wished to segregate their IT team completely from the support of the FM software. FMI s customer IAG was a prime example of a large company finding it difficult to get non-core software hosted in their corporate data centre. As far as IAG were concerned, they wanted the FMI software but they wanted FMI to host it. The Challenge in New Markets By making their software modular, FMI had the potential to open up new markets smaller clients could choose only the modules they needed rather than taking the entire software suite in a one-size-fits-all arrangement. KEY BENEFITS As a result of working with Telarus, FMI was able to: Capture new markets through the delivery of Software as a Service (SaaS) Better address existing markets that now require hosting and associated backup and DR with their software Commercially align their costs with revenue Reduce quote times as pricing new opportunities is easier Easily and cost-effectively add new customers of any size, no matter where they are located Mitigate risk through comprehensive high availability, backup and DR resources via redundant IaaS platforms and dual data centres Lower risk, decrease provisioning and support times through clearer solution demarcation Lower costs and increase service levels through better IT management and reporting tools FMI had seen that within the facilities management sector in general, there was a large unaddressed market where sophisticated software solutions were either not available or not economic to implement. This was particularly the case with the management of tier 2 and lower assets. FMI licensed software is technically capable of providing these services but was not structured commercially for these non tier-one markets. The challenge was how to open those doors. FMI s Commercial Challenges 1. The existing software hosting solution had a complex and confusing pricing structure 2. It had significant upfront costs 3. It was priced beyond the SMB market, which was more price-sensitive than the large corporate market. To satisfy the SMB market it needed to be based on a monthly recurring fee rather than a fixed upfront cost and it required a commercial solution with pricing that was scaled with the number of users. We were uncertain of the price and it had too many elements. The lower end cannot afford software services and maintenance. - Kristiana Greenwood, Director of FMI.

3 The Ease of Use and Mobility Challenges 1. FMI wanted to make their software more accessible by delivering it as software as a service (SaaS) rather than requiring installation on the client s IT system. 2. FMI aims to redesign their software to be delivered as a web application by the end of With users of FMI s software becoming increasingly mobile (with tablets and smart phones) they required a solution that could be delivered and used anywhere. 4. FMI also needed a hosting solution that they could quickly and easily deploy to reduce their provisioning times. It had significant upfront costs Business needs to act quickly - Kristiana Greenwood, Director of FMI. Quick response deployment within a short period of time was the goal - Ray Lodge, Technical Director of FMI. The Security and Disaster Recovery Challenge 1. FMI s software manages significant assets such as office buildings. These assets have a long life and so the longevity of the data is important. 2. Where FMI provides the software hosting FMI s existing corporate clients require highly functional and well documented backup and DR plans. This is expensive and not easy to deliver if the software is hosted in-house by FMI. 3. The new SMB market also requires FMI s software to be secure and highly available. The Telarus Solution Telarus and FMI identified that by delivering FMI s Software as a Service (SaaS) it would achieve the following: 1. Allow FMI to capture new markets 2. Reduce deployment complexity and timeframe 3. Increase security and availability 4. Lower costs 5. Align FMI s commercial offering with the expectations of the new SMB market How Did Telarus Achieve This? Telarus combination of managed networks, managed security and cloud services provided FMI with all the elements they needed to meet their business challenge of capturing new markets for their software. The Telarus Private Cloud solution was the ideal hosting platform for FMI s new Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

4 It provided: 1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): on demand computing resources (CPU, RAM and SAN Storage) on dedicated blade infrastructure with high availability. IaaS is supplied within a dedicated FMI virtual data centre. 2. Offsite Data Backup: data hosted at the primary data centre is backed up to a secondary data centre storage platform. FMI manages backup scheduling and restoration of individual files or complete server images independently. 3. Disaster Recovery of critical servers at a secondary data centre environment Mbps Internet access with Managed Security: 10Mbps centralised Internet access managed firewall securing the IaaS platform. Managed Security delivers anti-spam, antivirus, content filtering and extensive reporting. This was a magic solution for FMI Ray Lodge On Time and on Budget! The implementation of the solution required both the migration of FMI s existing hosting solution to IaaS as well as the provisioning of new IaaS resources for FMI. Telarus worked closely with FMI, providing both project management and technical resources to ensure the migration occurred with the smallest possible disruption to their business and with the least risk. The entire solution was delivered before time and on budget. Tools, Training, Monitoring and Reporting Telarus provides FMI with the self-service tools and training to be able to rapidly deploy, manage and monitor their software for new customers and for the creation and management of virtual machines within IaaS. So the whole system is able to function as a self-service model. Telarus nursed us through the learning process Ray Lodge A feature-rich Network Monitoring System (NMS) means that FMI can monitor their resource utilisation under IaaS. This provides a looking glass into day-to-day operations and detailed visibility of performance, availability and capacity metrics for CPU, RAM, SAN Storage, network connections etc. Telarus have also provided tools for backup and restoration through which FMI can schedule backups, access reporting and monitor event alerts for backup and restoration processes. They can easily create backup jobs which can be applied to single or multiple virtual machines, copying data from the IaaS environment to backup storage resources at an alternate data centre utilising Telarus's underlying fibre channel infrastructure. The Telarus Managed Security platform also provides FMI with detailed reporting to monitor the security of their IaaS solution.

5 The End Result The private cloud solution from Telarus has had significant benefits for FMI s business, enabling the company to: 1. Capture new markets through the delivery of Software as a Service (SaaS) 2. Better address existing markets that now require hosting and associated backup and DR with their software 3. Commercially align their costs with revenue 4. Reduce quote times as pricing new opportunities is easier 5. Easily and cost-effectively add new customers of any size, no matter where they are located 6. Mitigate risk through comprehensive high availability, backup and DR resources via redundant IaaS platforms and dual data centres 7. Lower risk, decrease provisioning and support times through clearer solution demarcation. 8. Lower costs and increase service levels through better IT management and reporting tools This has radically changed FMI s business model. - Kristiana Greenwood