Patties Foods moves to IBM cloud with Hobart services provider ISW

Following the successful implementation of IBM's MaaS360, Patties Foods, the maker of Four'n Twenty pies, plans to take more applications to the cloud with ISW.

Patties Foods is one of Australia's largest bakeries, founded in Victoria in the 60's and currently employing 570 people.

Zelko Erdec, general manager at Patties Foods, told CRN: "We will continue to minimise our software and hardware footprint and where it makes sense move certain applications to the cloud."

ISW cloud practice leader Theo Vereker told CRN that ISW is in discussions with Patties to move mail and other applications to the cloud.

In the second half of 2015, IBM premium business partner ISW was selected by Patties Foods to roll out IBM's enterprise mobility management solution MaaS360.

Within four weeks, ISW moved Patties from VMware's AirWatch to IBM's cloud, allowing the customer to decommission three servers and save in maintenance costs.

According to Patties' Erdec, the value of the project is around efficiencies. "The seamless transition from one application to another, a cloud platform without the headaches on an on-premises and cumbersome infrastructure," he said.

Erdec told CRN that the previous solution needed to be backed up every night and that a required yearly update of the software would take up to five days to complete.

The solution is used by 130 staff, 60 of which are sales reps who needed a mobile solution that granted secure, real-time access to reports, customer profiles, promotions, merchandise and store planning tools, order placement, route planning and asset management applications.

"We've now got total visibility of where our devices are around the country, ensuring we can remote wipe corporate data from individual devices without damaging personal information," Erdec said.

"We are now further capitalising on the extra functionality that Maas360 provides, such as the content locker, messaging service, and the ability to browse our networking drives remotely, yet securely. We want to try and drive further efficiencies and use this as a productive work and management tool."

Hobart-based ISW was in the CRN Fast50 in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014. The provider focuses on software and services and employs 50 people in Australia. The company has offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.