Case Study:How a 150-Staff Engineering Firm Cut IT Costs by 50% with Cloud Migration.
DracMachnical a growing engineering firm with 150 staff was struggling with ageing servers, rising maintenance costs, and limited scalability. By moving core workloads and storage to the cloud, they modernised their infrastructure, improved performance, and cut overall IT costs by 50% while positioning the business for future growth.
Client overview
The client is a multidisciplinary engineering firm delivering design, project management, and advisory services across commercial, industrial, and public infrastructure projects. Teams of engineers, drafters, and project managers depend on high‑performance applications, large CAD and BIM files, and reliable access to project data from office and site locations. The firm had grown steadily, adding new staff, offices, and projects, but its on‑premises IT environment had not kept pace. Leadership wanted a more scalable, predictable, and resilient platform without continually investing in new hardware.
Challenges
The on‑premises servers were approaching end of life, with increasing outages, slow performance, and costly emergency fixes. Storage was constantly running close to capacity due to large design files, forcing teams to archive data manually or keep project content on local drives and external disks. Refreshing hardware, renewing data centre contracts, and maintaining backup and disaster‑recovery capabilities represented a significant and growing portion of the IT budget. The existing environment also made it difficult to support flexible work and collaboration between locations, as performance over remote connections was inconsistent and often frustrating for staff.
Our solution
We completed a detailed assessment of the current environment, identifying which applications, databases, and file repositories were suitable for cloud migration and where modernisation would deliver the greatest benefit. A phased migration plan was developed to move file storage, line‑of‑business applications, and selected infrastructure components to a cloud platform, while decommissioning on‑premises servers in a controlled way. We implemented a secure, high‑performance cloud architecture with right‑sized compute, scalable storage, and automated backup and disaster‑recovery capabilities. Network connectivity was optimised between offices and the cloud environment, and identity and access were centralised to ensure that staff could connect securely from any location.
Client experience
Engineering and project teams noticed faster access to shared project files and more consistent performance when working from different offices or project sites. Collaboration improved as teams no longer needed to worry about which office a server was in, or whether storage was full before starting a new project. Planned migration windows and clear communication meant disruption was minimal, with most cutovers completed outside of core working hours. The IT team shifted from managing hardware and firefighting outages to monitoring cloud services, optimising costs, and supporting new capabilities for the business.
CEO | DracMachnical
Outcomes
By decommissioning on‑premises infrastructure and moving to a right‑sized cloud environment, the firm reduced its overall IT infrastructure and support costs by 50%. Hardware refresh cycles, unexpected repair bills, and data‑centre hosting fees were largely eliminated, replaced by predictable, usage‑based cloud billing. The new platform improved resilience, with built‑in backup and recovery options providing stronger protection for critical project data. Overall, the firm gained a modern, scalable technology foundation that supports current workloads and can flex with future demand, without the capital expense and complexity of traditional infrastructure.