Bartlett Cocke

“We needed to put a tool in place quickly and the software-as-a- service approach suited our requirement for speed at the time.”

Not only did we need a robust platform, but we knew needed an outside team to help us handle the workload associated with it.”

Steve Billingsley, IT Manager
Bartlett Cocke General Contactors

THE BACKGROUND

Bartlett Cocke is a 60-year-old, $750 million general contracting firm based in Texas. The company focuses on building and construction projects in selected vertical markets including education, industrial plants, healthcare facilities, multi-family housing and commercial ventures. The company prides itself on building things that last and add value to the communities they serve.

The IT department supports the internal company tech infrastructure across five office locations in Texas from the central San Antonio data centre. The department also builds and manages temporary IT centres located at each construction site to support those project leaders. It is not uncommon for more than 50 such sites to operate at any one time, performing needed IT functions throughout the construction life cycle. From accounting functions to project management tools, the smooth operation of these centres ensures on-time and on-budget construction delivery.

THE IT SITUATION

As recently as eight years ago, the Company did not back up the data on any of its systems. Steve Billingsley was brought in as the new IT manager to not only address this requirement, but to take the IT operation to the next level in cloud, data management and enterprise resource planning tools and software. The Company was committed to enhancing its automation through advanced digital tools that would add value throughout a project lifecycle, streamline collaboration and increase efficiency in its rapidly growing business.

Among the top priorities for Steve involved subscribing to a third-party software vendor platform, Axcient for its cloud- based data backup and disaster recovery functions. “We needed to put a tool in place quickly and the software-as-a- service approach suited our requirement for speed at the time,” he explained.

However Company quickly outgrew this solution. Booming construction projects meant burgeoning information to manage, backup and maintain. The software simply required too much staff time to support and sustain. “The old system required one and a half full-time staff – we simply needed those people in value-added roles to support our business and our construction project leaders rather than handle daily data management functions.”

Steve recognised the need for a new approach. “Data growth was exponential and would continue on that trajectory into the foreseeable future,” he said. “Not only did we need a robust platform, but we knew needed an outside team to help us handle the workload associated with it.”

He and the team examined the Rubrik software and gave it the highest marks for data backup and business continuity features. But the IT staff, already stretched, lacked the bandwidth to add Rubrik to their plate. “We simply did not have the resources to do it alone,” he commented.

THE SOLUTION

The Rubrik team introduced Steve to ProtectView which meant they were able to outsource the installation and ongoing management. “The combination was ideal – great Rubrik technology, the ProtectView platform and top outsourced data experts to make it happen,” he added.