ICON Builders, a general contractor, wanted to reduce the time and money that it was spending on managing and maintaining an important application. By signing up with IronOrbit, ICON succeeded in reducing its IT costs and outsourcing the application’s management to a hosting provider it could trust.
The Client
ICON Builders is a general contractor that specializes in the renovation and construction of affordable housing. Since 1984, it has renovated more than 17,000 affordable housing apartment units.
It has completed projects in five different states: Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Washington. According to its website, the company is currently engaged in nearly a dozen different projects—costing a total of $187.6 million—that involve the renovation or construction of close to 1,200 housing units.
The Problem
ICON Builders contacted IronOrbit because it was unhappy with its current deployment of an application called Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate.
Sage 300 CRE is business management software for enterprises in the construction industry. General contractors like ICON Builders use it to manage and track their finances, store and organize their electronic files, and assign and monitor the progress of project tasks, goals, and schedules.
At a certain point, ICON Builders decided that it was spending too much time and money maintaining its deployment of Sage 300 CRE by itself.
It wanted to redeploy the application with a hosting provider that would not just host the application but also perform all of the maintenance and support tasks that ICON once handled internally.
It was important for the hosting provider to be able to resolve problems with the Sage 300 CRE deployment quickly. It’s also crucial to maintain the availability of the application at all times, since much of the work at ICON involved the application in one way or another.
The Solution
“We moved our Timberline (Sage 300) server to their Hosting service and we have never had a better IT decision.”
In the end, ICON Builders selected IronOrbit, a leading provider of managed hosted IT solutions, to host its Sage 300 CRE deployment.
No other hosting company provides as many advanced IT services with its solutions for no additional cost as IronOrbit. For example, the IT services that came with ICON Builders’s hosted Sage 300 CRE (as they do with all IronOrbit hosted solutions) included:
- 24x7x365 all-inclusive technical support. All-inclusive meaning that IronOrbit will provide technical support for all of ICON’s networks and IT hardware and software. Not just the hosted Sage 300 CRE
- 24x7x365 monitoring and maintenance of the Sage 300 CRE deployment and its underlying IT infrastructure
- An IT security system that protected the Sage 300 CRE deployment from hacking attempts, malware, physical theft. And also from inappropriate access by Ironorbit personnel
- Complete onsite and offsite backups of all of the data associated with the Sage 300 CRE deployment. Which is performed multiple times daily
World-Class IT Solutions at a Price You Can Afford
ICON Builders only had to pay a low, flat monthly fee. This all-inclusive fee is for the hosted Sage 300 CRE and all of the included IT services.
In addition, no one at the company had to spend any of his or her own time managing the application. Plus, ICON Builderswas able to save itself thousands of dollars by not having to purchase any servers. Which it would need if it planned to host the application onsite.
By signing up for hosted Sage 300 CRE from IronOrbit, ICON Builders achieved its goals of reducing its IT costs and outsourcing the management and support of the application. They achieved that while also ensuring that the application was properly maintained and protected.
The Chief Financial Officer of ICON Builders, Marianne Laupp, summed up how pleased the company was with IronOrbit.
Laupp said, “We have been with IronOrbit for more than a year now. We moved our Timberline (Sage 300) server to their Hosting service and we have never had a better IT decision. The move went very smoothly and we have had very few minor issues since then. Their ticketing process and support is great. They look at a problem and have the ability to fix anything immediately. We are very happy that we moved to their service, it has saved us immeasurable time and money. I would highly recommend their team to anyone looking for a better IT solution.”