Nifast India Adopts the Cloud

Over the years, Nifast has recognized the need to increase its value in the supply chain and transformed its footprint into a global supply chain solution provider with strategically placed global facilities to optimize not only competitive quality sourcing but also comprehensive JIT delivery services from facilities located nearby some major customers.


From a modest start of being a US-based fastener distributor, Nifast has evolved into a global supply chain solution provider with 13 facilities in 7 countries. Utilizing the resources and global knowledge of the parent company, Metal One, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation and Sojitz Corporation, Nifast has developed a world-class global supply base.

Company

  • Size: 51-200 employees
  • Location: India

Industry

Practice Areas

Challenge

Nifast India Infrastructure was hosted completely on-premise, so remote work was not possible and security was a major concern. Frustrated at the expense of on-premises data centers, they wanted an environment aligned with advances in computing technology.

There was a huge dependency on on-premises hardware, due to which hardware failures had caused business impact. In the past Nifast had faced multiple downtimes which had impacted its ERP users. The company wanted to improve business continuity, Even the two-tier architecture caused lots of slowness and performance issues for their daily usage. Nifast India needed the resilience, adaptability, and efficiency of the cloud.

Nifast India Team hosted their Microsoft Dynamics Navision workloads on-premises which is their core application without extended IT support as they didn’t have a dedicated IT team to take care of the infrastructure. The team felt burdened by the expenses, cumbersome procedures, and performance gaps between the legacy infrastructure and current technology. They were not work from home ready and faced issues during the initial phase of the COVID – 19 pandemics.

Solution

Cloud 9 recommended a complete digital transformation solution by moving Nifast’s ERP solution to Azure Cloud so they can experience new capabilities that seamlessly connect people, assets, workflow, and business processes, empowering organizations to be more resilient.

Cloud 9 helped Nifast India to rehost their entire Windows and SQL server Infrastructure (including Microsoft Dynamics Navision). Azure offers compute options designed and approved for use with Dynamics Navision ERP. Cloud 9 designed 3-tier architecture for Nifast India based on the best practices set by Microsoft for Dynamics ERP. Cloud 9 has implemented RDWeb technology for the Nifast ERP users to securely access the environment via the SSL encrypted route.

Cloud 9 migrated 100+ GB of data and made sure that the transition was smooth. Azure Backup takes snapshots of the data according to a backup schedule. In addition, SQL Server Agent automates and schedules backups. The automated SQL Server backups help systems recover faster.

Results

Cloud 9 recommended a complete digital transformation solution by moving Nifast’s ERP solution to Azure Cloud so they can experience new capabilities that seamlessly connect people, assets, workflow, and business processes, empowering organizations to be more resilient.

Cloud 9 helped Nifast India to rehost their entire Windows and SQL server Infrastructure (including Microsoft Dynamics Navision). Azure offers compute options designed and approved for use with Dynamics Navision ERP. Cloud 9 designed 3-tier architecture for Nifast India based on the best practices set by Microsoft for Dynamics ERP. Cloud 9 has implemented RDWeb technology for the Nifast ERP users to securely access the environment via the SSL encrypted route.

Cloud 9 migrated 100+ GB of data and made sure that the transition was smooth. Azure Backup takes snapshots of the data according to a backup schedule. In addition, SQL Server Agent automates and schedules backups. The automated SQL Server backups help systems recover faster.

“As our infrastructure was hosted completely on-premises we were struggling to get remote access in this covid-19 pandemic. Security became a major concern and there was a huge dependency on the on-premises hardware and connectivity to it which caused hardware failures. We faced multiple down-times which impacted our ERP users. A two-tier architecture environment caused lots of slowness and performance issues. Cloud 9’s solution gave us the very much-needed resilience, adaptability, and efficiency of the cloud. Cloud 9 recommended a complete digital transformation solution by re-hosting our entire Windows and SQL server Infrastructure, while also implementing RDWeb technology for our ERP users which made for secure access via SSL encrypted route. Cloud 9 designed 3-tier architecture for us based on the best practices set by Microsoft for Dynamics ERP. We are thankful to Cloud 9 that we no longer need to invest in infrastructure but can concentrate on the core business, people and processes.

MR. Sharma
General Manager, Finance, Legal & Company Secretary