Cloud Case Study

CLIENT PROFILE:

JUCY Rentals is one of Australasia's fastest growing independent rental companies.

Established in Sept 2001 by brothers Tim and Dan Alpe, JUCY Rentals operates over 2000 late-model vehicles throughout New Zealand & Australia and have just opened their first JUCY Hotel in Auckland.

As market leaders in the New Zealand car rental industry, it's vehicles range from cheap and cheerful runabouts suitable for backpackers and budget customers, to the luxury full-size sedans with a few soccer team movers thrown in for good measure.

CHALLENGE

For some years, Origin IT ONEFEE client Jucy Rentals (NZ’s favourite and most trusted car and campervan rental business and winner of Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010) based it’s NZ Head Office very centrally in Parnell’s The Strand. This was also where Jucy housed it’s IT Network, connecting to it’s nationwide (and increasingly international) WAN. During 2010 Jucy extended it’s business interests into accommodation with the purchase of Jucy Hotel, also centrally located in Emily Place – offering a combination of hotel and budget accommodation.

The Directors made the decision to relocate the head office from it’s Parnell location to the Jucy hotel. With more than 20 staff and the IT network, this was not an insignificant logistical and technical challenge for Jucy.

As IT Partner, Origin was charged with the responsibility to effect the transfer of the IT equipment. Prior to the move – Origin had to not only formulate a plan for the logistical and technical relocation of the Jucy IT Network – but also had to consult and recommend if there were any other more efficient and cost effective solutions for Jucy, given Origin’s investment in ‘cloud computing’ server solutions for it’s clients.

SOLUTION

Initially the Origin team set about reconfiguration of the new IP addresses, and updated the network equipment for the new IP addressing scheme. The  physical switch-over of the office kicked into action on a Friday night led by Origin IT’s specialist Network Engineers Francois and Jackson. Throughout the weekend the Origin team carried out all required actions so that changeover was complete by Monday morning when the Jucy team arrived at the new Head Office. Origin’s team reconfigured all the Jucy IP settings to reflect the new IP addressing schemes adopted for the relocation. The team also connected all thin client PCs at the new head office to the network, then tested all of them to ensure successful re-connection.

However, after a cost/benefit analysis of relocating the existing on-premise servers from The Strand to Emily Place, the Origin Consultants recommended that Jucy instead ‘enter the Cloud’.  Jucy accepted Origin’s recommendations, and the weekend of the office move Origin’s Engineers moved Jucy’s old Servers from The Strand, and transferred them to the Origin IT Datacentre. Here, the Engineers ‘migrated’ every single Jucy Head Office PC user ‘profile’ from the old Servers into Origin’s new Citrix ‘Farm’.

The Engineers also created a WAN connection between the new Emily Place office and the new Citrix Farm at Origin housing Jucy’s profiles.  On Monday – the Jucy Head Office kicked off seamlessly with their new Network set-up.  The old Servers are being housed at the Origin data centre and are available for use into the future if required by Jucy to integrate into the network.

OUTCOME

The move and changes were completed successfully by Origin and the Jucy Head Office is now working effectively, with the management  and maintenance of the network now no longer an issue for the Jucy management.

Under the new ONEFEE SERVE Agreement, Origin takes care of the day to day management and maintenance of the new Jucy network, thus enabling the Jucy team to get on with what they do best – accommodation and transport!.  “We have been really pleased with the new Network set up put together by Origin” says Jucy Director Dan Alpe. “ The guys did a really good job over the weekend and we are very happy with the new ‘Cloud Server’ solution which is definitely more efficient and removes a lot of the hassle and responsibility that we had to deal with at the old offices”.