Background
Smart IT is a specialist provider of essential IT services, including the ERP platform Odoo. In the last few years, the company has tripled in size by developing and implementing Odoo solutions for a broad client base, ranging from small businesses with a handful of users to enterprises with over 300 users.
The challenge
As Smart IT’s client base expanded, so did their infrastructure needs. Previously, they hosted Odoo environments through another provider, however, this setup was unsustainable. The hosting model involved renting entire server blades, filling them with clients, and then moving to new hardware once capacity was reached. This created a ‘peak and trough’ pattern, where just as hosting became profitable, they were faced with large upfront costs again.
They needed a scalable, flexible solution which would allow them to grow organically while not demanding significant capital expenditure upfront, to avoid making dents in their profit margins.
The solution
As Smart IT looked to scale across a diverse client base, they needed a hosting provider who could keep up with their pace of growth, without compromising performance or support. After a consultation with our cloud experts, Smart IT opted for an enterprise cloud solution which aligned perfectly with their business goals.
As Odoo is built on Postgres databases, our technical team developed a solution to manage database replication between data centres, ensuring high availability and performance. One of Smart IT’s customers also required a disaster recovery setup, so we deployed a customised solution to meet those needs.
Our bespoke solution offered the flexibility Smart IT needed to grow without large capital investments.
The migration process from their previous provider was smooth and completed within weeks. When Smart IT first moved to Hyve, they had around five clients using the hosting service. Two years later, they are now close to 25 clients, with some of their larger clients also leveraging the disaster recovery solution.
Hear from Smart IT
“We didn’t come to Hyve to use their service for a single product or client, we’re using their hosting for a variety of individual clients.
Like most people in our industry, we wanted speed, reliability and good support; being able to get through to the right people at the right time when you need support was very important for us. We knew Hyve would tick all of these boxes.
The solution that Hyve came up with to be able to rent individual VMs for our clients on a piece-by-piece basis really suited us as it just meant that we could purchase the hosting for clients as and when we onboarded them. We didn’t have to make a big investment every few months as our client base grew.
Hyve provided the access to service as promised, it was exactly what we asked for and did the job. The support team have been very good, we’ve had no problems at all. We tend to find that when we put a support ticket in it gets answered really quickly. The guys in the support team are great. Depending on the issue, we tend to get talking to the correct person within the correct timescales every time.
The greatest benefit of our partnership with Hyve is the knowledge that we can carry on growing as long as they keep providing that hosting for us as and when we need it. If you’re looking for good solid hosting with solid support then Hyve is the partner to go to!”
Jonathan Bullen, Owner of Smart IT