How TDM Group Helped Company of Animals Migrate to
the Cloud Successfully
Company profile
Founded in 1979 by leading animal psychologist Dr Roger Mugford, Company of Animals develops innovative pet products with three core aims: resolve behaviour and training problems, improve animal welfare, and enrich the lives of pets and their families.
Their global presence and expanding operations mean a dynamic and cost-effective IT infrastructure that supports collaboration and scalability is essential to its success.
The challenge
Migrating from an on-premises infrastructure
Company of Animals was entirely dependent on an on-premises physical infrastructure which was coming to the end of its life – creating single points of failure. This was compounded by the server’s location at the business’s head office on Ruxbury Farm in Surrey, which is prone to power cuts. Consequently, if anything went wrong operations would suffer, such was the business’s reliance on this legacy hardware.
The business’s international reach meant this outmoded IT infrastructure created collaboration barriers. For example, accessing information from a file server in the UK would create time-consuming version control challenges for employees overseas.
In addition to the day-to-day constraints, capacity planning with on-premises systems couldn’t support their aspirations to scale up. They needed more space to expand, which is much harder to achieve with a physical on-site infrastructure. Moreover, increasing the on-premises resources would incur significant costs and take time to test and implement.
The solution
Infrastructure migration project
Working in partnership with TDM Group, Company of Animals decided that migrating their IT resources to the cloud would elevate their productivity, scalability, global mobility, and data security – not to mention save costs.
The foundations for a seamless transition to a cloud model were laid by TDM Group’s flexible, cost-effective, and secure hosting solution. This has been augmented by expert consultancy and efficient implementation services – and the results have been transformative.
Company of Animals IT Manager, Neil Littlewood explained the value of TDM Group’s business-led approach when taking the first steps on their migration journey: “With our Business Manager in our corner, we were reassured that migrating to the cloud wouldn’t be a step into the unknown. Any concerns we had about potential disruption during the migration project were put to rest by their guidance and support.”
“With our Business Manager in our corner, we were reassured that migrating to the cloud wouldn’t be a step into the unknown. Any concerns we had about potential disruption during the migration project were put to rest by their guidance and support.”
Neil Littlewood, IT Manager, Company of Animals
The result
A seamless managed migration
By entrusting the delivery of IT resources to a service that operates via the cloud, Company of Animals has replaced their antiquated infrastructure with a robust and streamlined approach.
Remote access to services in the cloud has instilled the organisational synergy that comes from working in a centralised system, together with expedited access to services for improved productivity. This efficiency is augmented by the collaborative power of Microsoft 365 with tools like OneDrive and SharePoint – a web-based platform that allows them to streamline their document management processes from several days to a few seconds. Moreover, the new cloud-based service empowers people to work remotely, which has increased productivity and supercharged the business’s global operations.
The competitive advantages Company of Animals have gained from embracing a cloud-first strategy – efficiency, flexibility, and better performance – don’t incur inflated costs; in fact, they have eliminated maintenance costs by replacing the physical infrastructure with the cloud and made their budgetary planning more manageable.
Neil underscored the value of TDM Group’s ongoing support: “Weekly consultations with our Business Manager allow us to proactively manage and accelerate our IT projects so they add business value without delay. We also receive regular updates from the TDM Group Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) team informing us when they’ve spotted a new vulnerability, how they plan to address it and how long it will take.”