Cloud Hosting

By Abbey Slattery, WRAL Digital Solutions

This article was written for our sponsor, Cii Technology.

When a storm hits North Carolina, Jason Cutler no longer worries his company's servers are going to fail.

"To be honest with you, I would never go back, even if that was an option," said Cutler, the information technology manager and a sales manager at Utility Service Agency.

He is talking about the change Utility Service Agency made six years ago, moving from using onsite servers to using the cloud.

"We made the move because onsite servers were getting very expensive to maintain," said Cutler.

Now, Utility Service Agency doesn't spend time maintaining servers as it works in the electric utility industry to make electric power transmission and distribution systems safer, more reliable, and more efficient.

"There are a lot of unknowns when you have a power outage or a storm and how that impacts a server on the premises," said Cutler. "When we moved to the cloud, that alleviated a bunch of headaches."

Using the cloud means Utility Service Agency's information is stored in an offsite data center that has multiple safety precautions.

"The best home for a piece of electronic equipment is a data center," said Mike Taylor, vice president of business development for Cii Technology Solutions. "A data center has physical security, has redundant air conditioning systems, has redundant electrical, it has redundant internet connections."

The necessity of those precautions became clear during an ice storm that caused a power out several years ago. Because Utility Service Agency was on the cloud, it was able to continue serving customers.

"We were up and running despite a major storm," said Cutler.

The same goes for summertime, when air conditioners put large loads on conductors, equipment is bound to fail unless it's on the cloud.

"If we lose power, everyone in my company is down," said Cutler. "And the way we sit right now, the way we're structured, we have a variety of tools in place that will help us be up and running. And this is where the cloud environment really has brought us to a more current state of having technology to support it and allows minimal interruption to our customers."

Not only can Utility Service Agency access its data anytime, employees don't have to be in the office to work.

"As long as you have internet and power, you can take your laptop and work virtually anywhere," said Cutler. "I worked out of my truck a couple times, where I needed to take care of some emergencies, and I tethered to my phone. That's another option that was available to us by using this cloud environment."

Cutler also does tasks on the go because he can access accounts and information through the cloud. This was particularly helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Mobility is really the key here," said Cutler. "That really can make or break the difference of you being successful at taking care of your customer."

Utility Service Agency's cloud system is easy to manage, quick, and allows for more employees to connect to the company.

"We have a nice infrastructure that was put together to support our growing company where it would not impact anybody from connecting at any point in time, 24/7," said Cutler.

Even the migration was painless, as Cii Technology Solutions managed everything.

"I leaned on them to think about different scenarios, how much space we'd need, how much memory we'd need, all the hardware that was required to allow everybody to log in at the same time and not max out the processors or the memory," said Cutler. "Obviously, it needs to run efficiently."

Cii Technology Solutions then created a customized solution.

"If you build a system without knowing what a company's workflow is, it's not going to be efficient for them to use, so that is absolutely paramount," said Taylor.

If your company is considering migrating to the cloud, Cutler has advice for you.

"Do it yesterday," he said. "It has been such a good move for us."

This article was written for our sponsor, Cii Technology.

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'I would never go back' - How the cloud changed the way one company does business - WRAL.com