Sherwood Design Engineers Sees Increased Productivity with Cloud Workstations
Remote working is helping to fuel the firm's growth phase.
Challenge:
The Sherwood Design IT team had already enabled some of their personnel to work remotely via a VPN. For people using simple productivity tools such as Excel spreadsheets, performance was usually acceptable. However, when the pandemic stay-at-home directives were issued, the team had a whole new challenge on their hands. Chuck Smith, director of IT at Sherwood, said, “Accessing a workstation by VPN from 500 miles away may not be a big deal if you’re working on an Excel spreadsheet, but if you’re trying to do something in Civil 3D modeling, forget it.” It was a this point that search began for a better solution for their power users.
Solution:
The firm’s IT partner, Digiwest, introduced them to Workspot. After speaking with a current Workspot customer about the benefits, the Sherwood team was able to quickly set up a cloud workstation test environment for ten of their power users and gave them “instructions to break it.” Once they proved that the solution could handle their requirements, they moved forward with the implementation on Microsoft Azure. At that point, “100% of the testers agreed that it was 10x better than what they had been using,” says Smith.
Benefits:
- Stunning performance that motivates CAD power users
- Significant time saved transferring files
- Streamlined mergers and acquisitions
- Ability to hire the best personnel for projects, no matter the location
Sherwood is prepared to accept new opportunities anywhere in the world.
“Now that we have Workspot, we are now in the position to expand virtually without the heavy investments in a physical office space.”
— Chuck Smith, director of IT
