It’s a familiar story: your small business grows beautifully, but the server you installed to support you at the start is groaning and grumbling into its golden years. This is where Carrie Stephens and husband Sean, of Plumbcraft, a plumbing and pipework solutions company in Auckland found themselves in Feb 2013:

“We had an in-house server that was 3 years old and failing.  Our lease had expired so we had to find a new solution – either purchase, lease or go online.  We had an independent IT contractor who looked after the server issues we were constantly experiencing and it seemed that every week or at least every month they were out fixing a problem.”

Running ‘Ostendo’, a job and scheduling program, the software developers recommended Plumbcraft look to Cassini Cloud for a solution.

After online research and phone conversations with Gavin Dixon, Cassini Cloud’s professionalism and service had struck a chord with Carrie.

“I was confident our data was secure, that we would see no difference in performance with our access now being cloud based or based in Australia, and easily accessible anywhere, on any PC. This was the flexibility we were looking for.  It ticked all the boxes we had, moving forward with our IT requirements.”

With 2 young children and managing a staff of 20 who work out of Auckland and service all of New Zealand, Carrie needed a hosting solution for Plumbcraft that was robust, flexible, accessible and affordable.

“Even leasing a new server was going to be equitable on cost with signing up to Cassini Cloud,” said Carrie. “It exceeded our expectations: no downtime, no more IT contractors involved, wasting time and money. We found a solution for all our IT requirements with Cassini Cloud, right down to advice on what laptop and hard drive to purchase and where from.”

“I have peace of mind knowing that if I or anyone needed to be out of the office they can access the software and all the necessary files any time, anywhere.”
I’d recommend them to anyone – they’re approachable, professional and supportive.”
It’s a familiar story: your small business grows nicely, but the server you installed to support you at the start is groaning and grumbling into its golden years. This is where Carrie Stephens and husband Sean, of Plumbcraft, a plumbing and pipework solutions company in Auckland found themselves in Feb 2013.

“We had an in-house server that was 3 years old and failing.  Our lease had expired so we had to find a new solution – either purchase, lease or go online.  We had an independent IT contractor who looked after the server issues we were constantly experiencing and it seemed that every week or at least every month they were out fixing a problem.”

Running ‘Ostendo’, a job and scheduling program, the software developers recommended Plumbcraft look to Cassini Cloud for a solution.

After research and phone conversations with Gavin Dixon, Cassini Cloud’s professionalism and service had struck a chord with Carrie

“I was confident our data was secure, that we would see no difference in performance with our access now being cloud based or based in Australia, and easily accessible anywhere, on any PC. This was the flexibility we were looking for.  It ticked all the boxes we had, moving forward with our IT requirements.”

With 2 young children and managing a staff of 20 who work out of Auckland and service all of New Zealand, Carrie needed a hosting solution for Plumbcraft that was robust, flexible, accessible and affordable.

“Even leasing a new server was going to be equitable on cost with signing up to Cassini Cloud,” said Carrie. “It exceeded our expectations: no downtime, no more IT contractors involved, wasting time and money. We found a solution for all our IT requirements with Cassini Cloud, right down to advice on what laptop and hard drive to purchase and where from.”

“I have peace of mind knowing that if I or anyone needed to be out of the office they can access the software and all the necessary files any time, anywhere.”
I’d recommend them to anyone – they’re approachable, professional and supportive.”

Brian Armstrong, Director of Business Coaching and Mentoring group, AltusQ, has had a long and happy association with Gavin Dixon and Cassini Cloud. Prior to engaging them to host the AltusQ Microsoft 365 platform and Dynamics CRM, and now their wordpress web site, Cassini Cloud had supported Brian in a previous business, Essentially Coffee. “I’d worked with Gavin a long time. We were one of his first clients, with  a business that distributed automated coffee machines and product…. When we started that business, Gavin was just starting Cassini Cloud. He’s always given us good service.”

Brian moved AltusQ’s IT hosting to Cassini Cloud 2.5 years ago because the price point was right. As business coaches, a rigorous attention to their own bottom-line is paramount, but this was not the only criteria that prompted the shift.  The smooth running of IT systems that support the smooth running of a business made up of individuals spread across a large geographical area was higher priority. “It’s not just about providing the service and the platform: a lot of people can do that. It’s more about understanding the business issue and working together to solve that. “

AltusQ have benefitted from the holistic view Gavin and Cassini Cloud have over their business. This has come of long association as well as technical rigour. “There’s [an] understanding of what is important and what isn’t important. Not everything is to die for. Sometimes it’s a matter of, “Well, it can wait”. But [Cassini Cloud] have an understanding around critical things in the business and the important things get actioned very quickly. “

For Brian, the most important reason AltusQ trust their IT matters to Cassini Cloud is the level of service they deliver.  “Gavin has always gone beyond. He  doesn’t just do what he’s paid to do under the service agreement. If there’s other things that we need, that he can help with, he’s always been more than willing to do that. It’s a bit unusual for an IT service provider to go outside the scope of the normal contracted arrangement and Gavin does that quite regularly for us.”

When AltusQ moved their wordpress site hosting to Cassini Cloud recently, Gavin was happy to assist with a tricky and potentially expensive integration between their onsite event registration and their CRM. Critical information needs to travel from site to a business’ database in order to manage customer relations and simple attendance figures, but building that funnel to deliver a seamless experience for the user and useful information for business is difficult. Faced with returning to developers who had set up a rigid integration system for AltusQ in the past, Gavin asked his own developers to build an ‘elegant’ solution: “There was work done previously, but that didn’t really work effectively. [It was] over-engineered, which meant that every time we wanted to do something, we had to go back to the developers and that wasn’t fun for anybody.”

The CRM integration was causing a traffic block to the site build and Gavin and his team stepped in. “[This is] an example of the extra I’ve talked about – Gavin could have said, oh well, we’ll just link with what you’ve got and keep going, but now it’s been architected more elegantly and it’s more flexible going forward.”

“The service aspect definitely is there. It’s one of the main reasons why we’ve worked with them in the past and will continue to do so in the future”.

Gavin and Cassini Cloud helped us implement a cloud-based solution for our IT infrastructure [to replace] a cumbersome onsite terminal server aligned to a provider. The system hadn’t grown with us. It was costly to upgrade and there was a lot of instability in it. When it crashed it put users and our business out and the on site repair visits from the IT provider cost a lot of money.

The model Cassini Cloud was able to provide enabled a system update [within] a package that offered cost effectiveness and flexibility

We had various sites offices around Australia and at the time had offices in every state. This allowed us better communication and better access to data in a more streamlined fashion.

A Smallcap ASX listed company, Saferoads are manufacturers and wholesale distributors of road safety products throughout Australia. The key for us is stability. The Cassini Cloud IT solution is robust and stable. Monitored all the time by Cassini Cloud, if there are any problems they are able to be remedied quite quickly.

Gavin has been able to architect the ability to access our systems, our database our files our information from any laptop anywhere in the world so we’re not confined to the office. It provides a very flexible work environment for our staff
I’ve recently been on maternity leave and I was able to perform my job remotely for 3 weeks and not have to step into the office.  This new system allows us to connect and tap into the business from anywhere. It’s work life integration. Work is a necessary evil but you’ve got to get enjoyment out of it and if you can do that from where you feel comfortable and allow that flexibility I think it’s a good thing

I’ve recently stepped away from safe roads and have engaged Gavin externally for my new business to do exactly what we’ve done here. If that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is.

This small but visionary importer of tools has moved to their own Cassini Cloud Core server as a first step in transforming the business from a traditional importer / distributor to being a highly efficient online business.

Derek (owner of Toolsite) has a vision to grow his business and the tenacity to make it happen. By moving to Cassini Cloud, his business has an enterprise-grade IT infrastructure at a cost point that his business can thrive on. By adding buy and sell-side e-commerce, Toolsite can now offer the kind of high-end electronic transactional support demanded by large companies.

Derek can pursue business without concern for the transactional demands growth might place on his IT infrastructure.

The Cassini Cloud Core servers are housed in world-class data centres (in Sydney), architected to the level expected by large businesses and can scale to almost any size business.