Executive summary
When Payette’s data was breached during a cyberattack, the company modernized by expanding to a hybrid environment with Microsoft Azure, while integrating and updating its use of Rubrik’s capabilities. Payette trusts in Azure and Rubrik to manage a comprehensive set of business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) capabilities to back up, protect, restore, and modernize the firm’s business-critical data. The results have been game-changing for Payette, and the firm is now seeking out new ways to increase its Azure footprint to create a flexible future in the cloud for future business innovation.
Bright opportunities in a company’s evolution can occasionally come out of the darkest moments. For Payette, an award-winning architectural firm based in Boston, that dark moment came when the firm’s data was breached during a cyberattack. Luckily, Payette Director of Information Technology Dan Gallivan spun into action with his longtime security partner Rubrik, and the threat was quickly minimized. But the incident prompted a reassessment of the overall on-premises data and compute environment.
As a result, Payette modernized the firm’s estate by expanding to a hybrid environment with Microsoft Azure while integrating and updating its use of Rubrik’s capabilities. Payette trusts in Azure and Rubrik to manage a comprehensive set of business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) capabilities to back up, protect, restore, and modernize the firm’s business-critical data. The results have been game-changing for Payette, and the firm is now seeking out new ways to increase its Azure footprint to create a flexible future in the cloud for future business innovation.
“ROI isn’t the only thing we value. Azure gives us peace of mind that our estate is always going to be operational and highly secure and that we can spin up workstations and get to the data we need.”
Dan Gallivan, Director of Information Technology, Payette
A new approach to safeguard large quantities of complex data on Azure
Payette’s projects are often very large in scale and complexity, such as hospitals and laboratory research facilities. The buildings embody a high degree of design sophistication and cultural impact. “They’re spaces for people to heal, learn, and produce some of the best research around the globe,” says Gallivan.
With that scale comes a lot of data because typical projects can last from three to five years. There’s also tremendous variety in the data, which include PDFs, CAD files, complex building models, and massive quantities of images, drone video files, and virtual reality design files, in addition to the company’s finance, HR, and payroll records. Thus far, Payette has migrated more than 30 terabytes (TB) of data to Azure, and an additional 50 TB is on the way. “We’ve seen exponential data growth, and all of it needs to be easily accessible and protected,” says Gallivan.
Although the firm has remote workers around the world, the main locus of activity is in its Boston headquarters, which can present IT challenges. “We don’t have large offices at other locations where we can replicate data,” says Gallivan. “So, taking advantage of the cloud has become increasingly critical for us.”
In the past, Gallivan primarily worried about physical causes of business interruptions, such as being in the flight path of Logan International Airport, winter storms, floods, and acts of terrorism. But Payette’s data breach focused attention on cybersecurity and the evolving strategies involved in cyberattacks. “We’ve been concerned about ransomware attacks that don’t happen all at once,” says Gallivan. “What if one occurred in hard-to-detect increments to the point that we’re not sure what happened and if our backups might be affected?”
The firm had been protecting on-premises data using its partner’s web service portal, Rubrik Security Cloud. Today, Payette and Rubrik have incorporated Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery into the BCDR solution toolkit, expanding protection from on-premises into the cloud. “The added threat monitoring capability of using the Azure platform in our security operations for detecting those data anomalies really gives us peace of mind,” says Gallivan.
Finding new ways to enhance business operations with Azure
For its core productivity solutions, Payette had already experienced a natural evolution from on-premises Exchange all the way to a hosted Microsoft 365 environment in Azure. “Microsoft 365 is our bread and butter,” says Gallivan. Payette’s updated BCDR plans revolved around using Rubrik and Azure to archive the firm’s largest unstructured network-attached storage (NAS) datasets in the cloud using Azure Blob Storage. While spinning up workloads in Azure, it became obvious to Gallivan that the process also presented a new, better way for his team to work.
“Azure and Rubrik gave us the ability to extend and back up to the cloud,” he recounts. “So, if I’m migrating servers for an emergency event and the process is seamless, why save it only for an emergency? As we were testing, I realized it was actually a great way to help us with a broader migration to the cloud, which I could just start doing in production.” The process soon opened new avenues for Payette. “Azure is cost-effective and has nearly equal performance as on-premises, so we’re now actively looking at moving other critical workloads to it.”
The BCDR enhancements also led to unexpected new efficiencies, helping Gallivan’s team do more with less. “Azure has been invaluable for regular maintenance tasks,” he notes. “To update a server now, we simply delete the virtual machine and then instantly restore it with the update. Azure has really become the backbone of our business.”
Payette used to prioritize having its data in proximity to its compute resources for performance reasons, but broader workflow options are opening up for the firm because this is no longer necessary. As Payette moved from on-premises servers to storing data in Azure, the next step was expanded use of Azure Virtual Machines on Windows Server 11 with Intel processors, and now that it’s started using the compute, the firm is beginning to use Azure Virtual Desktop. “These support the GPUs that allow us to do the rendering work with VR applications, all inside the cloud,” says Gallivan. “They also enable our staff to use ultralight laptops and still have access to large cloud models.”
And it’s not only on-premises server hardware that Payette is eliminating—it’s also sunsetting its aging fleet of workstations. Azure has helped reshape Payette’s workplace for a cloud future. “The office is a place for our staff to collaborate and work together, but their data doesn’t need to reside here,” says Gallivan. “It’s much more cost-effective for my team and our operations to host data in Azure rather than having a single point of failure. We’re moving everything to Azure.”
Doing more with less brings value and peace of mind
Payette must be efficient and meet company needs while being mindful of costs. “As the operating expense has shifted to software, pricing has been a real pain point in our budget, but Microsoft has been very fair to deal with compared with other software vendors,” says Gallivan.
But mere cost savings isn’t Payette’s only consideration. The money saved also has other hard-to-quantify benefits. “We’re investing our cost savings back into our people to continue developing their skills,” says Gallivan. “We also add more resources to our internship program, which has become a recruiting strategy for us to hire and retain the best people coming up.”
While there’s no metric for peace of mind, that doesn’t mean the benefits aren’t tangible and impactful. “ROI isn’t the only thing we value. Azure gives us peace of mind that our estate is always going to be operational and highly secure and that we can spin up workstations and get to the data we need,” says Gallivan. “Before, we always needed to be available, constantly checking to make sure that things were working, but with Azure BCDR, we can finally have some work/life balance. It’s these sorts of unquantifiable benefits that are most valuable to us.”
“Azure has been invaluable for regular maintenance tasks. To update a server now, we simply delete the virtual machine and then instantly restore it with the update. Azure has really become the backbone of our business.”
Dan Gallivan, Director of Information Technology, Payette