Dryco Takes Their Data from the Closet to the Cloud

Discover how Dryco took their data from the closet to the cloud and fortified their IT security with a ground-up, 360° approach

Dryco is a leading Canadian materials supplier in the wall and ceiling industry, providing builders and homeowners with products ranging from drywall to insulation, acoustics and beyond.

Founded in 1973, the company has over 150 employees and a fleet of 75 delivery vehicles serving customers from branches across British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.

Dryco’s vice president of operations, Toby Wadsworth, oversees day-to-day processes, service delivery and administration. As they’ve scaled over the years, the organization has been met with increasing demands to keep technology running smoothly, efficiently and reliably around the clock—a challenge to Toby’s in-house IT team of one.  

Challenges

As technology has evolved rapidly over the past few decades, so too has the way we do business. Digital transformation has disrupted many industries, and Dryco’s was no exception. While technology isn’t at the core of their product offering, it is the backbone that supports the systems on which they service their customers—and with dated infrastructure impacting operations, it was time to make a change.

When Toby first engaged with IX Solutions, their core services and data were being hosted on in-house, end-of-life servers out of their Langley, BC office. Reliability quickly became a critical issue for the organization.

“Dryco’s business is highly distributed,” says Shawn Jackson, President at IX Solutions, “so if there was a problem in this central location, it would affect all of their branches across Canada.” When your servers have a single point of failure, that can happen all too often.

“We had between six to eight servers at the time, and if our air conditioning or internet went out, they would simply go down,” says Toby. “This drove us crazy.”

Solutions

Following a comprehensive assessment of Dryco’s IT landscape and technology needs, IX Solutions partnered with the organization to modernize their infrastructure and security. As part of that initial assessment, the two groups analyzed the cost and benefits of both purchasing new servers and migrating to the cloud.

“We chose IX Solutions because of their expertise in cloud architecture,” says Toby.

Seeking increased reliability, scalability and ease of remote management, the organization ultimately chose to adopt the cloud. Planning and implementation took place over several months, and with new and improved infrastructure built from the ground up, it was now time to bring the organization’s security up to speed.

“We started with a comprehensive security audit,” says Shawn. “Based on those results, we’re now working on fortifying the organization with a 360 degree approach to security.” That approach includes implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), secure mobile device management through Microsoft’s Intune, and secure remote access so staff can safely log on wherever and whenever they choose.

Results

Today, Dryco’s IT and security posture have drastically improved—leading to increased up-time and reliability their team can count on. This means fewer disruptions to operations and ultimately happier customers and employees.

“The ability to scale our services when we need to has made all the difference,” says Toby. “Once a year, the accountants do in-depth reporting that requires us to increase the bandwidth and speed of our systems. Now, it’s easy for our IT team to make that happen.”

As the organization’s outsourced IT partner, IX Solutions continues to provide proactive server and desktop managed services including patching, monitoring, maintenance and backup—leaving Dryco’s team free to focus on what matters most.

“We’re not in the computer business. I don’t want to be spending time fixing technology issues,” says Toby. “And because they are so responsive, IX ensures I don’t have to.”