Gettys Achieves Global Collaboration Across Five Offices

Making Five Global Offices Feel Like One with Cross-Site CollaborationThe Gettys Group is a global company that offers a unique, holistic design consultancy service. Mark Shugarman, IT Manager at Gettys, was tasked with what seemed like the impossible: enable Gettys design teams across its five offices in Chicago, Miami, Hong Kong, Manila, and Dubai to collaborate on the same projects and feel like they were all working in the same room.

The company had opened offices to support production work and balance project workloads and was excited to expand, but designers couldn’t work together effectively on projects. Gettys had tried file replication solutions, added bandwidth and tested WAN optimization. Everything they tried failed in the end. Replication slowed down the applications, and even throwing bandwidth at the problem wouldn’t make it go away.

It was taking hours to move files between sites and interfering with user productivity. Centralizing files in one location wasn’t an option – it would take far too long for users to access files. Solving these problems, particularly for technical applications like AutoDesk AutoCAD and its Project Navigator module, “Has been the bane of my existence in my five years here at Gettys,” Shugarman said.

Data Replication, Data Corruption and Latency: A NightmareThe design professionals at Gettys needed to collaborate across offices in applications like AutoDesk AutoCAD, Project Navigator and Revit, Adobe Creative Cloud and SketchUp. The company had deployed Globalscape WAFS to replicate files between offices, but data corruption was a common issue with so many sites. Shugarman had to regularly restore files from backup, and users were making multiple copies of files. “It was an absolute and utter nightmare.”

The other problem with replication – AutoCAD users often asked IT to turn it off. “Imagine if six or seven people across offices needed to collaborate back and forth on project files,” Shugarman said. “If I stopped replication, their file access improved, but I had to do this constantly and it created data integrity issues.”

Case Study

Situation Snapshot:

• Globally distributed design firm with five offices around the world.

• Key applications: AutoDesk AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp, and Adobe Creative Cloud.

• Key challenge: Engineers needed to collaborate across five global offices, but couldn’t. File replication was slowing productivity and causing data corruption and version control issues.

He had to schedule replication to run off hours so project teams could meet their deadlines, but that meant managing multiple versions of project files. One user’s work could overwrite another’s. The Manila office couldn’t even use Globalscape effectively. Users were relying on email and FTP to exchange files.

Bandwidth and WAN Optimization: Not EnoughShugarman had to find a better solution. “I threw more bandwidth at the problem, which helped a little, but didn’t solve the problem in the end.” Users still couldn’t collaborate effectively with replication running.

The team brought in Riverbed in the hopes it would speed up replication and other network traffic. “It didn’t improve our replication software speed at all. If I had to copy gigs of data for a project, usually I’d wait until a Friday night to pull the trigger, then hoped it would be done by Monday,” Shugarman said. “Riverbed did speed up database access and helped with de-duplication, but not to the point that I was comfortable with it. Really, it provided no benefit to us at all.”

Collaboration with a PassportWhile he was testing Riverbed, Shugarman also began testing Panzura. The IT team tested how long it took to open the same AutoCAD projects in Chicago, Miami and Hong Kong. They also tested specific tasks that the design professionals would do on a daily basis. “There was a unique difference with Panzura versus what we had with Globalscape or even Riverbed, so it stood out really well.” Panzura reduces bandwidth consumption by only replicating the metadata of each file. It also increased performance of redirected folders when users travel to remote offices.

Thanks to Panzura, the Manila office could now collaborate in real-time and share project data with Hong Kong over a 10mb fiber connection. Manila and Hong Kong had been using a combination of FTP, email and file sync solutions to access files. “We loaded files from 3 or 4 projects on Panzura and instantly got some good feedback from our Hong Kong and Manila employees because they were able to easily share project data, despite 230ms of latency,” Shugarman said. “That’s something they could never do before. The designers were very happy with that, and our global design director had a lot of good things to say about the Panzura solution.”

Getty’s users also travel between offices regularly and need to access files. Gettys was using redirected folders, but access was slow for remote users. With Panzura, users could access files quickly on their home directory even when they were in a different office. Mobile users also have access to the same set of consistent data through Citrix ShareFile, which Gettys has integrated directly in to their email clients.

IT Infrastructure Simplification and ConsolidationGettys had been using local file servers, and had to constantly worry about running out of storage, and had to manage backups. With Panzura’s global deduplication and compression, they were able to cut storage costs and get backup and disaster recovery as part of the cloud and Panzura’s snapshot capability. “We just spent $50,000 for a new SAN and the thought of purchasing additional disk shelves for that in the near future was upsetting,” Shugarman said. “Our Amazon bill is now just $150 month.”

Gettys also has very sophisticated IT requirements to support its designers and applications. “Our IT infrastructure would make you think we’re 10 times bigger than we really are, but we’re able to manage all 5 global offices with an IT staff of just 4 people,” said Shugarman. Thanks to Panzura, the Gettys IT staff is able to deliver a better user experience and speed up project collaboration significantly.

“The whole company touches the data on Panzura. It’s a key part of our infrastructure,” Shugarman said.

About The Gettys GroupThe Gettys Group is an award-winning, international team of designers, procurement specialists and development consultants. Gettys has five offices around the world: Chicago, Hong Kong, Manila, Saudi Arabia and Miami.

With Panzura, Gettys Group was able to:

• Collaborate in real-time across all 5 global offices.

• Leverage employees on the right projects regardless of where they work.

• Simplify IT by getting rid of replication tools and eliminating local file servers

Panzura, Inc. | 695 Campbell Technology Pkwy #225, Campbell, CA, USA | 855-PANZURA | www.panzura.comCopyright © 2017 Panzura, Inc. All rights reserved. Panzura is a registered trademark or trademark of Panzura, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

© 2017 Panzura. vCS-Gettys-022217b