How ProStar uses Geospatial Intelligence™ Software to plan ahead
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Focus on: Empower Employees, Optimize Operations |
The engineer adjusts her goggles and begins scrolling through the computer screen. She still has a long day ahead of her, and miles of pipelines left to monitor. Thankfully, the geospatial software her company invested in should make her job a lot easier—as long as all the data looks good. A wave of metrics and measurements flicker across her monitor, as she studies the numbers in front of her. Leaning back slightly, she lets out a quiet sigh of relief. The numbers are solid. With easy access to a wealth of meaningful data, she can monitor the condition and status of the gas pipelines stretching across the city. For this gas company—and for other organizations that keep some of their most vital assets out in the field—ProStar’s geospatial software is the key to success.
Geospatial Intelligence Software™ uses technology to collect, analyze, and interpret location-based data for assets in multiple locations or spread out across various distances. Colorado-based software company ProStar Geocorp develops and sells cloud and mobile Geospatial Intelligence Software™ to its customers. ProStar’s 15 employees combine their technology with business intelligence to enhance enterprise software, helping organizations share critical information, map their assets, and collect, qualify, and store data.
Put more plainly, organizations that don’t maintain their assets in one centralized location now have a cutting-edge software solution to keep tabs on every aspect of their operation, regardless of location. With the success of their software, ProStar began planning for the next level of enterprise growth and embarked on a digital transformation that would provide the technology they needed to get there.
Identifying ProStar’s key challenges and most pressing enterprise needs
Though the company is fairly young—founded in 2014—ProStar Geocorp has experienced quick growth. Connectivity was an essential piece of ProStar’s future, and Chief Operating Officer Carl Lashua recognized the need to update their infrastructure to better manage their expansion. The business needed powerful technology to support their remote employee base, and a reliable digital solution to address their frequent and recurring system outages. ProStar’s small team was losing valuable productivity time constantly dealing with infrastructure issues.
The growing business needed a reliable solution that would meet four key areas:
• scalability to support expansion into the global market,
• affordability to keep costs manageable as they continued to grow,
• data security to ensure their assets are protected, and
• reliability to prevent any noticeable system outages.
Given these requirements, ProStar’s ideal digital solution would leverage the reliability of cloud technology and allow the company to work with a dedicated partner to handle the maintenance needs of their new system. According to Lashua, the business was looking for a solutions provider with an established global footprint—one that could offer a product that would enable data sovereignty to support ProStar’s global customer base.
“Our goal is to expand out into the global market, so we wanted to make sure that whichever cloud service provider we chose had that global imprint,” explained Page Tucker, CEO and founder of ProStar. “That was one of the key components in making a decision, and that’s why we chose Microsoft Azure.”
Partnering with Attunix experts to support ProStar’s employees
As a business consulting and technology services company specializing in Azure-based solutions, Attunix was more than prepared for the challenge. In fact, once Microsoft partner Attunix joined the digital transformation process, the entire Azure migration was completed seamlessly and without issue. Attunix experts designed a specific plan for the implementation, and then continued to serve as a resource for ProStar employees. Thanks to the partnership, ProStar can now depend on an entire team of specialized technical support, rather than waste time and resources developing an in-house IT team.
Using Azure’s flexible interface, Attunix designed a solution tailored to ProStar’s needs, streamlining multiple processes and leading to noticeable cost savings. The Attunix team was also proactive with their proposed solutions, frequently suggesting new ways to address potential issues, and ultimately saving ProStar additional time, money, and resources.
“Initially we were trying to work on infrastructure problems, when our core competency is on geospatial intelligence,” explains David McGee, VP of Operations at ProStar. “Now they can focus on developing our platform, and the infrastructure side of things are handed off to a trusted partner in Attunix.”
Improving productivity and connectivity with cloud technology
ProStar’s Azure-based solution successfully met all the software company’s most pressing needs. The solution ensures data security with its single sign-on feature and is easily scalable to account for the company’s impending growth. With Microsoft’s servers in the US, Canada, and five other countries, ProStar can increase its own global footprint while ensuring data sovereignty for their international customers. According to Lashua, the company hasn’t experienced a single noticeable system outage since the Azure migration—a marked improvement for ProStar’s hardworking team. If that wasn’t enough, the Azure migration even led to an impressive 50% reduction in maintenance costs for the company.
For ProStar’s geographically dispersed team, the Azure’s cloud technology helps maintain consistent communication. With Azure’s shared environments, ProStar employees can easily manage multiple parts of the company’s software development process—from internal quality assurance and quality control protocols, to client-facing production environments, and user acceptance testing.
“The ability to be able to develop and test on the Azure platform is essential to the function of our team given that we have different levels of developers and testers spread out across the country,” McGee says. “Having a cloud platform to develop and test on is critical to us.”
Driving ProStar toward a successful future with Azure
ProStar’s Azure migration has the added benefit of ensuring consistent technology across the company and throughout their client base, integrating seamlessly with other Microsoft business solutions their customers are leveraging. Combined with the scalability, cost savings, security, and reliability the business was looking for, the Azure-based system designed by Attunix is the exact solution the software company needed.
“At the end of the day, the three biggest concerns coming across in the market are security, performance, and pricing. As result of Azure, we can address all three of those easily,” says Tucker.
With the digital transformation completed successfully, ProStar now considers Attunix a strategic business partner. According to Lashua, they welcome any recommendations Attunix offers, and even regularly work together in client meetings to deliver the best software solutions to their customers. Moving forward, ProStar plans to continue their partnership with Attunix and explore other Microsoft products to tackle their next major business focus: boosting their sales and marketing efforts. With Azure’s cloud technology and cutting-edge features in place, ProStar is eager to take on their next challenge, while continuing to scale their company and successfully market their product to customers around the world.
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