Master Brokers moves into cloud computing with LC9

The company has increased its offices from one in Brisbane to six throughout Australia, without having to implement new applications or infrastructure.
 
It is using a cloud computing managed service provided by LC9, a division of Lucida Group.

LC9's services are based on 3Tera's AppLogic cloud computing platform. Local technology company firstservis is the sole distributor of 3Tera's solutions in Australia. 
 
"I did some shopping around and all the vendors I went to wanted to reinvent the wheel and proposed costly alternatives with long timeframes," said John Cutuli, director, Master Brokers.

"Then LC9 came up with a proposal to run our existing application on a hosted Citrix service built on AppLogic, thereby negating the need to move to a new database and set up.
 
"LC9 ran a trial and I thought it was perfect. We just enter a username and password into a web page, and we're up and running. Our one application is now shared across the six sites."
 
Master Brokers is an Australian sales and merchandising broker in the grocery industry.

It negotiates on behalf of smaller manufacturers that do not have the scale to justify their own sales team to get their products on to supermarket shelves.
 
The company previously operated from a single office in Brisbane using a database application to produce reports and weekly worksheets for its sales representatives.
 
Cutuli said this served them well but the company has since expanded its business and now has six offices and 154 sales representatives across the country, with each state managing its own team.

It wanted to share the same applications across all sites but not have different versions of data at each location, with associated security and backup issues.
 
"Previously when we had to compile a national report, Victoria, for example, had to produce its reports in Excel and email them up to me, and I then had to take that file and merge it with my Excel reports. It was cumbersome and very time consuming," said Cutuli.
   
He said LC9's offering was the only service in Australia he could source.
 
"I rang a number of IT companies and did a lot of web browsing, and there was really nothing else out there that could take a product like our database application and make it user friendly across multiple sites," he added.

"Now when we update information in our Brisbane office, it's automatically updated across the whole country. There are no longer multiple versions, and reports even print out on our existing printers."
 
Master Brokers hopes to use additional services from LC9 on the AppLogic platform, such as running the company's mail, collaboration and web services.
 
"LC9 has provided a good cost-effective solution for us and we're really only in our infancy in terms of using AppLogic's full potential," said Cutuli.
 
Craig Taylor, managing director, Lucida Group said its cloud computing offerings are based on services rather than on customers having to build and maintain applications themselves.

"We view cloud computing as an evolving concept and LC9 brings together software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) so that customers can focus on their core business activities," he said.
 
Cloud and utility computing provides access to remote resources and allows companies to pay only for the IT they use.

It also negates the cost of building and managing data centre infrastructure and IT staff.

3Tera makes enterprise-grade cloud computing solutions for customers of all sizes in external hosted clouds, or as a platform that can be deployed in corporate data centres, behind customer firewalls.

AppLogic is the first commercially available cloud computing platform that completely removes the cost and complexity associated with infrastructure.
 
"Having these services based locally through firstservis and LC9 brings great value to the Australian marketplace," said Derek Merdith, managing director, firstservis.

"It improves performance of the cloud as there is no latency and businesses do not have to worry about time zones and response times when seeking support."