Macquarie and Microsoft Azure come to the aid of Australian renewable packaging leader dealing with a six-month cloud exit by previous managed services provider.
Macquarie Telecom has helped renewable packaging company Opal Group with an urgent cloud transition, following its previous provider’s advice that it would stop supporting the company’s storage network.
With the transition complete and partnership established, Opal is set to reap the benefits from Macquarie’s recent Azure Expert MSP status awarded by Microsoft.
Headquartered in Melbourne, The Opal Group, owned by Nippon Paper Group, has more than 4,500 staff and 80 sites across Australia and New Zealand. The company specializes in sustainable fiber packaging and paper solutions, and exports Australian-made products to 70 countries across the world. The current business was born out of a $1.72 billion merger.
On that, Opal was advised that part of the business had previously suffered from major outage issues with its data center provider, and further identified a substandard storage area network (SAN) and Disaster Recovery (DR) posture, which left unattended risked its ability to manufacture and deliver products to customers.
These include some of Australia’s largest retail and FMCG companies, which rely on Opal to provide essential goods and services to often lockdown-stricken communities. The company had targeted it for early replacement but was given a further post-acquisition issue with the late advice on storage support.
“We essentially had three months to tender, prepare and contract, and three months to transition over the Christmas period,” said Phil Boon, Chief Information Officer, Opal Group. “This was petabytes of data, 85 virtual machines, and it was all tied to our most critical workloads including SAP financial systems and operational applications.
“We reviewed options from a range of providers tied to each major cloud player, and the Macquarie and Azure combination stood out. We had confidence in their partnership and the dual accountability that came with it, their sensible proposal, commercial flexibility, and – most importantly – confidence in their ability to get the job done under a tight deadline.”
The Macquarie and Azure team worked closely with Boon’s team, as well as manufacturing technology partner Realtech which helped manage SAP applications to successfully transition services and workloads into Macquarie’s cloud environment. This was stored within its sovereign Data Center Campus and delivered on time and on budget.
Azure Expert roadmap access
Buoyed by the successful transition and much-improved cloud environment, Opal is now looking at how it can leverage Macquarie and Azure’s ecosystem to focus more on applications and how they can improve their business processes. This has timed perfectly with Macquarie’s recent Azure Expert MSP status, which gives customers like Opal greater access to Azure’s roadmap.
“The Macquarie and Microsoft partnership was already a huge drawcard,” added Boon. “Now it’s like we’ve got a direct line to Azure, to the very coders putting together the next generation of services. It’s clear this is going to have a hugely positive impact on our business as we continue to grow.”
Macquarie is among just over 100 partners across the world that hold this accreditation, becoming the fastest company in Australia to achieve it relative to business inception. The credential required a huge four-month effort of more than 1,000 hours from 40 members of Macquarie’s team across its cloud services, telecom, data centers and government divisions.
“We go all in with the partners that can bring the biggest benefits to our customers, and it would be hard to find a better example of that anywhere in the world than Macquarie and Microsoft,” said Luke Clifton, Group Executive, Macquarie Telecom.
“This is about trust, collaboration and giving great service to companies left out in the cold by providers more interested in underservicing and overcharging. We are trusted by companies like Microsoft and great customers across Australia because we subscribe to the very opposite.”
Macquarie customer, ITW Construction’s Segment IT Director, Scott Lancaster, also praised the Expert MSP status: “We value simplicity, service and strong relationships and Macquarie has these in spades.
“In cloud we often see attempts to be ‘all things to all people’, i.e., providers talking up connections to all the major cloud providers. That isn’t necessarily a good thing – what Macquarie has with Azure is a far deeper relationship, which clearly shows us the business outcomes they can deliver for us.”
“Macquarie Telecom was able to demonstrate its compliance with the Azure Expert MSP program successfully,” said Amar Gutta, Cloud Consultant with ISSI (Information Security Systems International), the third-party auditor who validates the accreditation.
“In addition, Macquarie Telecom’s Azure Managed Services portfolio is powered by a wide spectrum of innovative automation, tooling and industry assets, thus rendering the ability to deliver significant thought leadership and operational efficiencies for customers in Azure Managed Services.”
A spokesperson for Microsoft said: “Only the most high-fidelity cloud managed service providers are awarded the Azure Expert MSP badge, intended to give customers confidence when selecting a partner to help them meet their Digital Transformation goals.”
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