This case study explains how Compete366 worked with Rusada, a software solution developer for aviation maintenance, to build a resilient and secure infrastructure using Microsoft Azure.
Download a PDF version of the case study
About Rusada
Rusada is one of the world’s leading Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) software companies. Initially established as Russell Adams Ltd in 1987, Rusada are a privately owned company that develops intelligent software solutions for the aviation industry. Its ENVISION platform aids organisations in managing their airworthiness, maintenance and flight operations, and is used by over 100 customers worldwide to manage 2,000 fixed wing and rotary aircraft.
Headquartered in Switzerland, Rusada has offices in the USA, UK, UAE, India, Singapore and Australia.
The Business Challenge
Rusada’s software is used by aviation organisations worldwide. Initially deployed as an on-premise application, the challenge was that many of their customers didn’t have the in-house IT skills to maintain the software and hardware platform, or were in remote locations with poor connectivity.
For the aviation industry software availability and resilience is absolutely critical. It is essential for airlines to be able to provide a full history of maintenance checks and components used in order to be able to fly. Without this data, the aircraft will simply not be allowed to take off.
A few years ago, Rusada took the decision to host their software locally (for the UK and Europe) using a private cloud. However, as they expanded their cloud software around the world – they found that the latency to connect to the UK was too slow. The decision was made to look for an alternative solution.
The Solution
Rusada’s IT experts decided to use Microsoft’s Azure technology and infrastructure to provide hosting of their applications in different Azure regions that are close to their customers. This meant that their clients using the software no longer needed to take on any of the tasks relating to setting up and running an on-premise server – such as ongoing maintenance, software patching, back-up, restore and disaster / recovery planning. The new Azure cloud infrastructure would mean that all of this could be provided as part of the service from Rusada.
As Paul Coyne, Service Delivery Manager explains “The Azure-based SaaS solution allows our customers to focus on their core business – which is aviation maintenance. They don’t need to worry about running an IT set up to use our technology and can concentrate on their maintenance operations.”
Now Rusada offers their SaaS offering early on in any conversation with prospective customers, and it is ideal for some of the remote locations where their customers work. And as they have a number of clients across geographies stretching from Canada in the North West to New Zealand in the South, they choose an Azure region that’s closest to each customer and spin up a pair of Azure Virtual Machines in a Resource Group dedicated to that customer. Rusada’s application team then deploys the MRO software on this infrastructure and after this is complete, they set up Azure backup and Azure Site Recovery for the VMs.
As well as using Azure for their customer infrastructure, Rusada also makes good use of the Azure Portal to manage their internal IT requirements. With 150 people worldwide in offices spanning the USA, Switzerland, the Middle East, Australia and Singapore, the Microsoft365 suite is well used for collaborating, sharing information and communications across diverse geographies and time zones.
And the Rusada development team is making full use of Azure DevOps, where they are really seeing the benefit for managing their development processes and testing.
Benefits
- Resilient infrastructure which customers demand – easy to set up, restore and test
- Development Team use Azure DevOps and can turn resources on and off to suit their requirements
- Allows Rusada to focus on its main business – software development
- Allows its customers to focus on their core business too – which is aviation – not managing IT infrastructure
Working with Compete366
At the point of moving from on-premise to a SaaS offering, Rusada decided to look for a partner to support them with the transition and selected to work with Azure specialist Compete366. Compete366 experts worked with the Rusada team to help to set up the environments, manage them, and ensure the resources are utilised most cost effectively.
As Paul explains “It’s great to work with the Compete366 team, the team members are really knowledgeable, helpful and responsive. No question is too difficult for them. They have really helped us to manage our Azure costs and ensure we have the right environment. When we bring a new customer on-board we can scale up immediately via the Azure portal and quickly make environments available to our customers.”
“We also find that there’s never a heavy sales pitch from them – they are technically focused and recommend what’s right for us.”
Future Plans
Rusada has a range of tools that they can integrate with their in-house support software, and plans are in place to integrate this with Azure DevOps too, to ensure that both systems are kept in synch.
And in the future, Rusada is potentially looking to expand its hosting offering for smaller customers into a multi-tenanted environment, secure in the knowledge that Microsoft Azure can provide this, and Compete366 will be there to support them.
If you’d like to find out how our Azure experts can help you set up your IT infrastructure in the most effective way then do get in touch. We’ll be pleased to help.
Contact our Microsoft specialists
Phone or email us to find out more – or book a free, no-obligation call with our technical consultants using the contact form.
“It’s great to work with the Compete366 team, the team members are really knowledgeable, helpful and responsive. No question is too difficult for them. They have really helped us to manage our Azure costs and ensure we have the right environment. When we bring a new customer on-board we can scale up immediately via the Azure portal and quickly make environments available to our customers.”
“We also find that there’s never a heavy sales pitch from them – they are technically focused and recommend what’s right for us.”
“We had great support from the Compete366 AVD expert, who was really helpful, and guided me through options to tackle issues that arose.”
“The great thing about our AVD set up is that we have a custom set up for each project which Compete366 showed me how to do. And with the scalability and flexibility of AVD – we can meet clients’ expectations and get project users up and running more quickly.”
“We were immediately impressed with the advice that the Compete366 specialists in Azure Architecture were able to provide. This was all new to us and we really needed some external expertise that we could use to get our questions answered. The beauty of working with Compete366 is that we transferred our Azure consumption to them, and at the same time received all of their advice and guidance free of charge.”
“Working with Compete366 has been like extending our own team – they are extremely and easy to work with. Right from the outset, it was clear what was on offer – everything was presented to us in a straightforward and uncomplicated way. They also provided just the right level of challenge to our developers and saved us time and money by suggesting better ways to implement our infrastructure.”
“Compete366 were able to help us leverage some useful contacts in Microsoft. We really value the expert advice and guidance that they have offered us in setting up a highly scalable infrastructure. We are also setting in place a regular monthly meeting which will allow us to further refine our architecture and ensure we keep on track as our requirements grow and change.”
“I have been delighted with the migration, where my team worked very hard, supported by expert advice from Compete366, and achieved everything in the timescale we had set out. Compete 366 made sure that we didn’t make any expensive mistakes, and guided us through the process”
