Neuren Pharmaceuticals was facing the daunting task of implementing a new electronic Quality Management System (eQMS) while simultaneously developing an entirely new set of quality documentation to replace their legacy QMS. With prior eQMS implementations at other companies often extending well beyond promised timelines, Neuren needed a solution that could deliver on schedule without compromising compliance or usability.

By selecting Egnyte's life sciences solution, Neuren achieved a complete eQMS implementation in just 12 weeks. The intuitive, SharePoint-like interface led to rapid adoption, while the cost-effective validation package significantly reduced the resource burden typically associated with system validation. Today, Neuren is expanding its use of the platform beyond document management to create a comprehensive quality ecosystem that can scale with the company's growth.

Challenge: Implement a compliant eQMS quickly without breaking the budget

Neuren Pharmaceuticals faced the challenge many biotech companies encounter: implementing a validated eQMS that could meet stringent regulatory requirements while being cost-effective and user-friendly.

"In the last decade to 15 years, I've implemented probably over 20 quality management systems," notes Sharon Reinhard, a pharmaceutical executive with 27 years of experience across clinical development, operations, and quality assurance. "We all have a little bit of PTSD left over from prior experiences."

With plans to launch an entirely new quality management system, including SOPs, policies, forms, and templates, Neuren needed a solution that could support this complex transition. Previous implementations at other companies had often extended well beyond promised timelines, sometimes ballooning from 12 weeks to six months or more.

Solution: Egnyte's intuitive eQMS with flexible domains for different workflow needs

After evaluating multiple eQMS vendors, Neuren selected Egnyte's life sciences solution. Key factors in their decision included cost-effectiveness relative to comprehensive features, adherence to 21 CFR Part 11 compliance requirements, straightforward implementation timeline, intuitive interface familiar to users, and flexible multi-domain structure for different workflow needs.

"We had demos from four or five of the big name providers in this space," Reinhard explains. "Seeing the system firsthand, how it works, and if it seems simplistic is important. The easier something is, the easier the uptake is by your organization." 

Neuren implemented three distinct Egnyte domains: 

1. A test environment for experimentation and validation
2. A validated GxP environment for controlled document
3. A non-GxP workspace for drafting and day-to-day collaboration

Benefits: 12-week implementation with high user adoption and cost-effective validation

Despite launching an entirely new quality management system alongside the Egnyte implementation, Neuren achieved go-live in just 12 weeks—a timeline often promised but rarely delivered in the industry.

"This by far was the easiest experience that I've had," says Reinhard. "Most companies promise you a 12-week implementation with a Gantt chart... and then very quickly, you start to realize that timeline isn't going to be met. But in this case, we really did go live in 12 weeks."

Egnyte provided a comprehensive, cost-effective validation package that significantly reduced the time and resources typically required for system validation.

"Egnyte already has what we can call sort of an off-the-shelf set of solutions, scripts, things that are already pretty progressed," notes Reinhard. "That was what kept the 12-week launch more realistic than if you are truly starting from scratch."

The system's intuitive interface led to rapid adoption across the organization. The familiar folder structure and permissions model reduced the learning curve for end users.

"When people are familiar with something, you tend to get faster buy-in and adoption rather than push back and resistance," explains Reinhard. After launch, Neuren achieved nearly 100% training compliance within a six-week training period.

Employees particularly appreciate the secure file-sharing capabilities, which enable them to exchange large data files with external partners without risking exposure of sensitive information.

"We all have to get massive data files and document files from outside parties," Reinhard notes. "The fact that we can send them a link and bring it straight into the system is just not a feature you can use in a lot of other systems where it's secure."

The integrated learning management system streamlined the training process for new SOPs and policies.

"What's nice is you can set the amount of time people are going to have to train. It doesn't force you into something. I like the flexibility of making something effective immediately if I need to start using it right away, or I can set a training period of two, four, six weeks."

Looking Ahead

As Neuren continues to grow, they value Egnyte's scalable licensing model that can accommodate rapid expansion—a common scenario in the biotech industry where companies often grow from 5-10 employees to 30-50 virtually overnight following promising clinical data.

The company is also exploring additional uses for the platform beyond standard document management, including processing deviations, CAPAs, and change controls, leveraging Egnyte's flexibility to create a more comprehensive quality management ecosystem.

"Overall, Egnyte is a straightforward, cost-effective, easy-to-adopt system," concludes Reinhard. "If your needs are to have a one-stop simple solution, something that's cost-effective, that meets the health authorities’ expectations for a 21 CFR part 11 compliant system, and that your management isn't going to have a heart attack when they see the budget, Egnyte is definitely a good option to pursue."

A&E Design is an architecture and design firm with a portfolio of exciting projects, including a renovation of the Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone National Park. 

While relatively modest in size, the company manages enormous volumes of data. To keep that data accessible to stakeholders across the state of Montana and beyond, it was paramount to minimize silos and data sprawl. 

To address this need, ARKANCE—A&E’s partner for technology solutions such as Autodesk and Bluebeam—pointed the company toward Egnyte. A&E’s subsequent adoption of Egnyte has eliminated the barriers standing in the way of their hybrid work model and enabled future growth.  

Challenge: A&E Struggles to Access Files on Its Own Terms

With workers spread across multiple offices, enabling everyone to access and share data using A&E’s on-premises data storage platform was a major headache. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the problem, as many staff members began working from home, further straining the firm’s existing infrastructure.  

To connect these sites and remote workers, the firm relied heavily on VPNs. This proved unsustainable, especially for Mac users. Wesley Miller, IT Director at A&E Design, explained: “Our Branding and Marketing teams are all on Apple devices, and the VPN just wasn’t working. People kept getting frustrated trying to access their files. The issue got a lot worse during COVID when everyone went remote.” 

Sharing files under such circumstances required convoluted workarounds. With no reliable way to gain timely access over a VPN, users had to download files to their local machines to edit. Thumb drives and external hard drives were used to share exceptionally large files with consulting firms. 

Solution: ARKANCE Brings in Egnyte’s Cloud-Hosted Platform

A&E’s technology partner ARKANCE was aware of the issues the company was facing. So when Miller reached out to his contact there about renewing A&E’s subscription to another data platform, ARKANCE recommended looking at Egnyte. “The thinking was that Egnyte had proven really successful in the AEC space, could easily meet our heavy cloud data storage needs, and was great for sharing and accessing files on any device,” Miller explains. “That made it easy to sell to my leadership team.” 

Egnyte serves as a cloud-hosted file management system that eliminates file access barriers for users in any location. In testing Egnyte, users found that they were able to open Adobe Creative Cloud files and other content directly in Egnyte and share them with internal and external stakeholders via secure links with granular access permissions. Brian Smith, Cloud Solutions Specialist at ARKANCE, elaborates on why this was so significant for A&E: “The brain of many data platforms focuses on their filers. Egnyte’s brain is in the cloud. A&E's current solution didn’t have a lot of great options for remote file access, and A&E started to feel the sting from that when they went remote during the pandemic. Egnyte is perfect for that, and for the hybrid in-office and work-from-home model A&E has now.” Critically, all file sharing now happens through Egnyte, completely eliminating the need to copy files between systems like Windows and multiple data silos—all of which were previously in use—and then having to share those files as email attachments, creating further security risks and contributing to data sprawl.  

With so many large files, Miller initially had concerns about data storage. Egnyte quickly put those concerns to bed. “We have some massive folders with huge reality capture files,” Miller says. “Egnyte just vacuums those up with no problems, and it doesn’t struggle when we transfer large data volumes.” And if any files are accidentally lost or overwritten by a user, Egnyte’s Secure and Govern tools, audit logs, and easy file search functionality quickly neutralizes the issue. 

Benefits: Seamless Collaboration from Anywhere, on Any Device

A&E set out to create a functional and reliable hybrid work model in which users could work on mission-critical files using the device of their choice. Egnyte has enabled them to achieve that goal with remarkable ease.  Joe Cates, Business Line Director for Egnyte at ARKANCE, adds, “Based on the challenges A&E Design was facing, I knew that Egnyte had the right features and benefits to fit their needs. In my time working with the AEC Industry, rarely has there been a solution in the market that solves for office workers and remote workers to provide the same experience whether you are at home, in the field, or working from the office. Egnyte does that and more." 

Asked to name his favorite Egnyte feature, Wesley says: “There are a ton that I love, but if I have to name one, I’ve got to go with all-device file sharing. If someone reaches out because they’re having trouble finding a file, I can just send them a secure link instead of sending a downloaded file as an email attachment or showing them how to find the file in a letter drive they might not know how to navigate. It’s amazing how easy Egnyte’s mobile app is. I remember I was once sitting in the parking lot of a pharmacy when a colleague reached out looking for a file from a decade-old project, and I was able to pull out my phone and send it immediately on the Egnyte app, right from my car.” 

A&E’s relationship with the Egnyte team also ranks far ahead of their experience with previous data management providers. Wesley says, when working with Egnyte’s Professional Services team during their implementation: “PS knew exactly what we’d need in terms of hardware and bandwidth, and they have a great data migration tool. Once I provided what was needed, they had us up and running exactly when they said they would—no delays. All the while, communication and responsiveness were top-notch. That has been true not just of PS, but of the entire Egnyte support team. And ARKANCE was such an essential partner in finding this solution for us and connecting us with it. I’m really grateful to them for that.” 

All in all, Egnyte has changed what Wesley thought was possible with cloud-based content storage and collaboration. “I used to tell people there was no panacea for cloud-based storage in our industry. There would always be some issue with real-time file access or other details. Egnyte has shown me I was wrong. It’s the only cloud solution I’ve seen that is truly enterprise data management, that solves for people working remotely, and that is completely secure and easy to use.” 

Known for its proven results and partnership-driven approach, Choate Construction Company’s employee-owners provide nationally recognized commercial construction services for its clients and industry partners. Offering the benefits of a nationwide contractor with the dedicated touch of a local firm, Choate Construction’s specialized personnel consistently deliver successful projects across a variety of market sectors, including industrial, healthcare, hospitality, corporate, mixed-use, and more. From its innovative OneLife safety program to its philanthropic efforts to “Build Up” its communities, Choate’s ultimate purpose is to enrich the world through the people, places, and relationships it builds. 

As Choate grew, so did the company’s information, creating challenges with permissions, folder structures, accessibility, performance, and storage. Even with AWS cloud infrastructure, Choate saw an opportunity to further optimize and streamline how company information was managed at scale. Its technology investment in Egnyte made that optimization possible. 

Challenge: Traditional Cloud Solutions and Local IT Miss the Mark

Over the course of Waters’ career, she has seen the use of technology in the construction industry proliferate to the point that her company, whose tech stack once consisted of little more than Microsoft Office and preconstruction software, now uses more than 60 different applications. But while Choate has been an early tech adopter, scaling information across multiple offices and jobsites proved challenging.  

This created significant hurdles for the company. As Waters explains, “When a new job started or a physical office renovated or relocated, we had to figure out: Do we need to add servers? What other hardware is needed? How are we handling permissions?” Juggling cloud and local infrastructure increased administrative costs and workload. Prior to Egnyte, teams utilized Citrix to access file servers remotely, which, while effective for its time, wasn’t designed with a mobile-first user experience in mind. 

Choate could not remain reliant on infrastructure that involved storing data in multiple locations, was difficult to permission at scale, and difficult to access remotely. Instead, the company needed a solution that married scalable cloud infrastructure with scalable permissions. Choate’s IT team set about looking for a technology partner that could make that happen. 

Solution: A Secure, Centralized Cloud Environment in Egnyte

• Prowess in the AEC space 
  Egnyte’s track record of serving—and understanding the unique needs of—the construction industry was “hugely important,” Waters says. “Project files in construction can have unique requirements, it was critical for us to work with a partner that understood that complexity. Egnyte is just that partner. Whether it’s the simple process of adding content from their mobile app, Egnyte’s Procore integration, or the ease with which we can search content or access it remotely, Egnyte’s understanding of construction helps us in many ways.” 
  
• Governing content access 
  Also impressive was how easy Egnyte made it to gain full visibility into where content was stored and who had access to it. The Choate team could set access permissions on project templates to have project security 85% setup before project folders were created in Egnyte. “Setting and managing file permissions can get complicated,” Waters says. “We love the simplicity of using groups and preconfiguring the majority of our permissions. We can audit access easier and administer access changes quickly.” Waters also comments on the impact this had in reducing security vulnerabilities: “Egnyte helped us follow least privileged access. Before, we struggled to see who had access to what, or where content was stored. Now all it takes is a quick look in Egnyte to see all of our content and how it’s permissioned.” 
  
• User experience 
  Based on her experience with other technology solutions, Waters expected pushback and learning curves when it came time to implement Egnyte. None of that happened. As she explains, “Our users love Egnyte, particularly the remote access functionality. If they’re traveling and there’s a project question, they can view the content in Egnyte’s mobile app and resolve questions quickly. We’ve never had that ease of access for project files, it’s a game changer for accessibility.” 

Once Egnyte was implemented, it served as a centralized location for content, governed by granular permissions with flexible yet secure accessibility. In fact, when Choate decided to open their seventh location, permissions and folder structures were preconfigured, employee-owners in that division had immediate access to Egnyte’s cloud environment — no server setup or additional IT administration necessary. 

Benefits: A Clear Runway for Uninterrupted Productivity

With Egnyte, Choate has removed many of its information accessibility challenges and the headaches that came with them. Information is more accessible—and better secured—than ever before. The firm’s confidence in its ability to control information access is heading in the right direction. All of this has broken down the impediments that had previously caused frustration. “Egnyte has made us a more productive company,” Waters says. “In the past, we had to pause to discuss servers, storage, backups, and permissions – our discussions on those topics now are half what they once were. We can add users, storage, and change permissions directly in Egnyte quickly and easily in most cases.” 

Moving to Egnyte also presented Choate with an unexpected option when opening their seventh location: the possibility of a serverless office. The Choate team is continuing to test this concept and are excited to see the many impacts this infrastructure flexibility could have in the future. Being able to focus on being a builder and less on IT infrastructure is a win for the team’s productivity. And while they expect to have a few physical servers stick around, the hope is to leverage Egnyte’s scalability to limit that. 

Another accelerator: The Egnyte team’s readiness to give Choate support during all phases. “Egnyte is truly dedicated to our success,” Waters says. “During our implementation and post-implementation, our Egnyte Customer Success and Account Team have been responsive and informative. We work with a lot of technology companies and have experienced service decrease post-sales or post-implementation. When we have a challenge, Egnyte has stepped up to help without asking for professional service agreements for every little thing, that means a lot to our working relationship. Egnyte is committed to getting Choate to full utilization of the platform by keeping us in the loop on new features and doing ad-hoc training with our team.” 

With Egnyte up and running, Choate’s IT team is enjoying the peace of mind that the company’s partnership with Egnyte has provided. “Between information security and access limitations, there were so many hurdles that made technology work against us instead of for us,” she explains. “It’s empowering to see many of those hurdles become secondary concerns with Egnyte in our toolbox.” 

Campbell University, a private institution serving approximately 5,000 students, faced significant challenges due to escalating electronic data, network complexity, and stricter security regulations. Its lean IT team struggled with fragmented on-premises file storage, burdensome permission management, and outdated data sharing methods that presented security vulnerabilities and compliance risk. Recognizing these pressures, Campbell initiated a strategic cloud migration to centralize content and enhance data protection.

Partnering with Egnyte, Campbell achieved digital transformation. The secure cloud platform streamlined IT operations, empowered departmental users with self-service file permissions, and fostered real-time collaboration. Crucially, Egnyte fortified the university’s data security posture with advanced features like ransomware detection and robust data governance, facilitating compliance with evolving regulatory requirements.

The Challenge: Overwhelmed IT, Fragmented Data, and Growing Compliance Pressures

Prior to its strategic cloud migration, Campbell University grappled with escalating IT and data management challenges. Assistant CIO John Skuce noted a dramatic increase in electronic data and network size in recent years, with thousands of devices requiring protection. Document and network security became paramount concerns, adding significant pressure to the IT department.

A primary hurdle for the university's already-busy IT staff was the administrative burden of local file storage. "We have a very small staff, and we spent so much time upgrading servers, and assigning permissions to various folders and files," Skuce explained. It was also difficult to maintain version control when files were shared as email attachments.

From a financial perspective, Deborah Gibbs, University Bursar, highlighted challenges in handling sensitive financial documents. “There was an attitude that data breaches happened to others but not here or in higher ed in general, and it was solely IT’s responsibility.” Sensitive information was often shared through physical storage devices or sent via campus mail, email attachments, and fax…methods that lacked the robust security and centralized control now deemed essential.

The evolving regulatory landscape, including HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), led the university to confront the reality that data security was no longer optional. Gibbs underscored this, stating, "We understood that there are consequences, both financial and reputational, for non-compliance."

Solution: A Unified Platform for Campus Efficiency and Security

To address its data management and security challenges, Campbell University implemented Egnyte as its comprehensive content platform, enabling a new approach to file storage, collaboration, and data governance. The move addressed administrative burdens on its small IT department, particularly by empowering departmental users with permission management. Skuce stated, "Egnyte has enabled us to offload a lot of administrative tasks directly to our users, which has helped us tremendously. Now IT can focus on more strategic initiatives.” The platform’s ease of use led to rapid, widespread adoption, with approximately 850 users across administrative and academic departments. Gibbs expressed, "I was surprised how quickly Egnyte was embraced by the university community after its implementation. People were eager to learn it, and everyone is actually using it."

 

Empowering Collaboration and Ensuring Robust Security

Egnyte transformed campus-wide collaboration by replacing fragmented legacy methods with seamless Microsoft 365 integration. This allowed users to share secure links instead of email attachments, while enabling real-time co-editing of documents. Skuce affirmed, “Now, it's very easy to share links, and people can collaborate in real-time on a single document, which has been incredibly helpful.” Beyond collaboration, Egnyte’s Secure & Govern product provides crucial data protection capabilities. “My favorite aspect of Egnyte is ransomware protection, which helps me sleep better at night.” 

Driving Efficiency in Financial Settings

In the Bursar's office, Egnyte enhanced the management of sensitive financial data. Protected information can be securely emailed to parents and students via links. Internally, Egnyte facilitates secure file sharing with critical teams like bill clearance, general counsel, and finance, streamlining daily operations. Gibbs stated, “Egnyte has provided the Bursar's office a tool to be more confident in the way that we handle and protect sensitive information.” Audit processes are also streamlined. Campbell teams can set up secure folders for sharing sensitive student and financial data with external auditors, overcoming previous difficulties with cumbersome portals and access. Gibbs affirmed that "providing access to the audit team has been extremely easy" with Egnyte's simple permission features.

Results: Enhanced Efficiency, Strengthened Security, and Campus-Wide Empowerment

Egnyte’s implementation yielded significant results across Campbell University, fundamentally transforming its operational efficiency, security posture, and collaborative capabilities.

The IT department experienced a substantial reduction in its administrative burden. By enabling departments to manage their own file permissions, valuable IT resources are freed up for more strategic initiatives. The rapid and widespread user adoption was a key indicator of success.

Collaboration across campus has been dramatically improved. Cross-functional departments can now easily share secure links and co-edit documents in real-time. Skuce explained that this new collaborative environment has streamlined work processes throughout the university. The ability to collaborate seamlessly has also generated environmental benefits, by significantly reducing the amount of paper used at the university. This unified approach has created a centralized repository for all critical documents, including student, faculty, and payroll data, enhancing overall document security.

The Bursar's office has greater confidence and control over sensitive financial data. This newfound confidence stems from the ability to securely send protected information externally to parents, students and auditors, as well as internal teams.

Finally, Egnyte has significantly enhanced job satisfaction and operational flexibility across Campbell University. Team members can now access information securely from anywhere, at any time. Gibbs summarized the impact, stating, "Egnyte literally brings everyone together, which has improved the effectiveness, efficiency, and overall job satisfaction for our team members.”
 

As companies grow, their challenges often grow along with them. Clearstead Advisors, a Cleveland-based registered investment advisor with the SEC offering comprehensive financial services, has learned this firsthand. In the past five years, it has roughly doubled its staff, tripled its assets under management, and opened several new office locations. The only challenge? This growth led to data sprawl, inconsistent IT usage, and heightened challenges in navigating a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. 

Partnering with Egnyte has empowered the firm to gain control over these critical challenges without impeding its growth in the process.

Challenge: Inconsistent IT Threatens Compliance

The more staff and acquisitions Clearstead brought on, the more employees needed to access the company’s data from different locations. Steven Wolken, Chief Compliance Officer at Clearstead, knew this paradigm was only sustainable if there was uniformity in the systems people used to access the data – something Clearstead lacked. “Some offices were using SharePoint, some were using local servers, some were using cloud. Clearstead needed a system that could consolidate networks from its multiple locations,” Steve explains. “Clearstead needed to address how people saved data. Locations were saving data by client, some by year, and others by service. All of this created data sprawl, and the resulting lack of visibility into what content was stored where and how it was being shared created potential risks.”

The intensifying regulatory landscape governing the financial sector only ratcheted up the stakes of managing this sprawl. In recent years, financial service companies like Clearstead have faced a patchwork of federal and state privacy and compliance regulations requiring them to maintain full visibility into what client data they have in their systems and where it resides. As Steve explains: “At the federal level, you have the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), which regulates how financial institutions handle client’s nonpublic personal information. Then you have a patchwork of state-level privacy laws, plus international regulations like EU GDPR. The growth we were experiencing made it hard to ensure all the data in our multi-system environment was monitored, and it only got more challenging as we grew and new regulations kept changing.”

The firm tried several approaches to unifying its disparate IT environment, including using VPNs to connect remotely to offices and attempting to implement SharePoint as a potential solution. But users complained about challenges in areas like file access and collaboration. “SharePoint, in particular, was not an adequate solution,” says Dennis Kasper, Senior Managing Director, Systems and Cybersecurity at Clearstead. “File changes took hours to sync, resulting in conflicting versions. Users hated it. It got so bad we ended up going back to on-premises file management.”

Solution: Leverage Egnyte to Unify Data Environment

Clearstead kicked off a search for a modern, cloud-based file management platform that would enable the company to scale a unified infrastructure to all its remote offices. The team began evaluating Egnyte on the recommendation of several partners and vendors who were using the platform. “Egnyte checked all the boxes,” says Edward Mielcarek, Managing Director, IT Operations at Clearstead. “It performed well, was extremely scalable, and had a great, feature-rich user interface.” Perhaps the most important aspect of that interface was the presentation of data through a mapped file drive, which was aligned with the way users had developed workflows with their previous systems and therefore allowed them to navigate their content in a way that worked for them.

Critically, Egnyte provided the speed and easy file access that was necessary to overcome the user resistance that made VPN reliance and SharePoint untenable. “Our users need to share data freely. They’re not willing to compromise on speed and access. Egnyte was a great solution for these folks,” Dennis says. With user resistance out of the way, Clearstead was able to consolidate its IT from its disparate systems into Egnyte – a massive step toward reducing the data sprawl that had previously caused so much trouble.

Through features such as Secure & Govern, Egnyte also provided essential support in meeting the intensifying regulatory demands facing the financial sector. As Steve puts it: “As we continue to grow and add more data, not only do we need to monitor and protect client data with strong security measures, we also need an easy way to catalogue it. That’s a huge part of regulatory compliance for financial service firms. And those governance capabilities are built right into the Egnyte system.”

Benefits: More Confidence in Compliance and Security

With Egnyte, Clearstead has been able to neutralize its data sprawl issues and position itself to meet compliance requirements in an evolving regulatory environment – all without creating userexperience challenges that could hinder its ability to get its work done efficiently. “The SEC has increased its focus on cybersecurity, which will only require more governance and monitoring capabilities from firms like ours,” Steve says. “Working with Egnyte allows us to address new regulations.”

On the user experience side, Dennis emphasized the importance of Egnyte’s file explorer interface, noting that "to me that is the anchor that allows us to do other things". He explained that while document management solutions can be a drastic change for users accustomed to Windows File Explorer, Egnyte provides a familiar foundation upon which a document management experience can be built. This foundation positions Clearstead to move forward with rolling out more advanced features, such as metadata tagging and automated workflows, available through Egnyte's web interface, and also to restructure their data for better accessibility and leverage.

Now that Clearstead’s data is migrated into Egnyte, the firm is looking to further improve its process with Egnyte features like metadata tagging and workflows. For other financial firms dealing with data sprawl and compliance demands, Edward has some advice: “Don’t wait to switch to Egnyte. We should have done this a long time ago. Now that we have, I’m really excited to keep learning more about how we can use the platform to further improve our security and governance posture and make our user experience the best it can be.”

Charles Perry Partners, Inc. (CPPI), established in 1968, is a leading construction firm specializing in institutional and commercial projects across the Southeast. Facing challenges with managing vast project data, collaborating efficiently across teams, and ensuring robust security and data governance, CPPI sought a modern solution to replace traditional methods and address data silos.

By leveraging Egnyte as a central content platform integrated with Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC), CPPI successfully automated manual workflows, improved access to critical project data for all stakeholders, including non-project users, and enhanced their overall data management, security, and compliance posture, resulting in significant gains in efficiency and reduced risk across their operations. 

Challenge: Streamlining Data, Enhancing Workflows, and Managing Risk

Like many growing construction firms, CPPI faced significant challenges with traditional on-premises file servers and disconnected systems. Brad Buckles, VP of Technology and Innovation, noted that their initial move to the cloud was driven by the need to address disaster recovery and find better tools for collaboration, particularly with their teams spread across multiple offices and in the field. Managing traditional file servers proved inefficient for their dispersed operations, and a critical need was the ability to securely share data externally.

Compounding these issues were rising concerns around cyber threats, particularly ransomware. Buckles explains, "Every technology leader that I speak to worries about the big ransomware problem. If something like that happens, we need a way to confidently restore our data without downtime and delays."

Beyond security, traditional systems made routine tasks like version control unnecessarily complex and often required IT support, creating bottlenecks that prevented end users from quickly managing document versions themselves.

Furthermore, critical project data was becoming siloed in specialized applications like ACC. While ACC was (and is) vital for project teams, many internal stakeholders needing access to project information primarily use other platforms. Departments like legal, accounting, and pre-construction require easy access to documents like contracts and specifications without navigating a project-centric tool. Manual processes consumed valuable time for project managers, such as generating, saving, emailing, and moving documents between platforms. Buckles describes this administrative burden: "Project managers truly are overwhelmed with the amount of paperwork they have to manage on a day-to-day basis."

This highlighted a clear need to streamline workflows and provide easy, centralized access to data for all who need it, regardless of their primary tool. 

Solution: Unifying Project Data with Egnyte and ACC Connect

The search for a comprehensive solution led CPPI to Egnyte, a partnership that began in 2014. After evaluating different solutions, CPPI selected Egnyte and has been a customer ever since. Moving their data to Egnyte's cloud addressed many of their initial problems.

A key element of CPPI's solution leverages the integration between Egnyte and ACC using ACC Connect—Autodesk’s branded version of Workato, a popular iPaaS platform. This integration directly addresses the data silo challenge. As Buckles explains, "We went into this trying to solve two major problems we see in construction. One was the project manager paperwork burden, and the other was enabling non-ACC users to access data easily.”
 

ACC Connect enables CPPI to create automated workflows or "recipes" based on triggers. Automated workflows now create corresponding folders in Egnyte based on the project structure in ACC and synchronize files between the platforms. This ensures data is neatly organized within their established folder standards, avoiding fragmented storage. Egnyte also provided the necessary tools for managing version control, which is crucial in construction. 
 

Results: Streamlined Operations, Enhanced Security, and Empowered Teams

The integration between Egnyte and ACC has delivered significant results for CPPI, fundamentally changing how they manage and access project data. One major benefit is the reduction of administrative work for project managers. By automating the transfer and organization of documents from ACC to Egnyte, project managers no longer have to manually save, move, or email files. This allows project managers to touch documents such as contracts only once, without subsequent manual saving or sharing steps.

Crucially, the integration breaks down silos and provides easy access to project data for departments outside of the core project team. Buckles highlights this key benefit: "Not every user that needs project data needs to be in ACC. We wanted to have that data readily available in a Windows File Explorer experience that they're accustomed to seeing."

Legal, accounting, pre-construction, and even marketing can now access necessary contracts, specifications, and other documents directly from a familiar folder structure in Egnyte, without needing ACC licenses or training. This significantly improves cross-departmental collaboration and efficiency.

Automated workflows also ensure that contract documents are securely backed up and comply with internal standards and retention policies, mitigating risks associated with manual handling and ensuring data is securely backed up. This automated process leads to high reliability, as well as high adoption rates.

Furthermore, the move to Egnyte significantly enhanced CPPI’s disaster recovery and security posture. The ability to efficiently roll back data provides confidence in recovering from potential incidents like ransomware with minimal disruption. Buckles is confident in their readiness: "We're happy to know if we ever have an attack, we've got the ability to roll back in an efficient and quick way."

For CPPI, the combination of Egnyte's robust content management, its integration with ACC, and the automation enabled by ACC Connect has resulted in streamlined operations, empowered non-project users, enhanced security and compliance, and freed up valuable project team time. This allows CPPI to continue focusing on delivering successful institutional and commercial construction projects across the Southeast.

In pump manufacturing, one small error can spell big trouble on the plant floor. As the world’s largest independent pump rebuilder, Hydro, Inc.’s engineering teams are the go-to experts for clients across the energy industry, including the nuclear sector. With 16 offices around the world, the firm handles massive amounts of documentation and depends on fast file sharing to facilitate a multi-step quality assurance process. But in 2021, the firm realized its local file servers couldn’t keep up with an ever-expanding amount of data.

After considering other file management platforms like OneDrive and Dropbox, Hydro’s leadership team chose Egnyte for its streamlined quality assurance process, large-volume snapshot recovery, and Microsoft co-editing features. Now, Hydro is free to grow its footprint without constant workarounds and time-consuming workflows.

Challenge: Vast Amounts of Data Clog Local Servers

Before implementing Egnyte, Hydro’s engineers stored their SolidWorks design documents and other data on local servers. But as the company expanded, managing its massive data ecosystem became a hassle, says Chief Technology Officer Shafi Yusuff: “Our total data consumption is somewhere around 27 terabytes. Storing all of that and backing it up was a nightmare.”

Between controlling different design versions and making sure documents have secure permissions, trying to navigate everything locally or through a VPN was a headache for the company. And with a growing emphasis on serving nuclear clients that require strict regulatory adherence, this cumbersome data management system made an already lengthy quality assurance process even longer. The team knew they were in a precarious position, and decided it was time to explore new options.

Solution: Enhance File Management With Egnyte’s Document Workflows

As part of the evaluation process, Hydro considered Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox. Egnyte was chosen primarily for its specialization in secure file management. Shafi also felt more confident in Egnyte's security against external threats and was impressed by Egnyte's focused development roadmap. "OneDrive is not the core business of Microsoft; it's one of the thousands. I didn't see that there was a roadmap where that product could become stronger as we move forward," said Shafi. This perspective contrasted with his view on Egnyte: "This is Egnyte's core, your bread and butter. You're going to invest to make it better for everybody ... more integration with apps, more AI solutions, and a focus on helping the customer. That's the key differentiator between others and Egnyte."

Initially, Hydro brought on Egnyte simply to replace its scattered file servers. “We pumped all our data into Egnyte with the intention of using it as a cloud file server with more control in terms of permissions and sharing,” explains Shafi. “But over time, it became a solution that helped us do a lot more than just store files.”

Egnyte’s AI-powered document workflows have also made it easier to collaborate with Hydro’s external partners. For nuclear facilities in particular, Shafi says it’s common to share upwards of 3,000 pages of documents at a time. Before the team started using Egnyte, finding and correcting errors in those documents was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Now, it’s almost instantaneous. And to make things easier for customers, Hydro is using Egnyte Copilot to build this repository of engineering data into a new revenue engine: a curated knowledge base. “Clients can get information in an instant and see exactly what steps have been done,” explains Shafi. “This way, they can use that information to do some of their own baseline repairs instead of sending it back to us, which would lengthen the overall process.”

On the quality assurance side, these new workflows have also sped up the approval process. Hydro’s document reviews were once a struggle, involving upwards of five team members at a time. “We’d release a document to one person, then they’d review it and comment on what needed to be changed, then it would bounce back or go to someone else,” says Shafi. “The process could repeat multiple times before it was finished.” Instead of playing this long game of back and forth, Egnyte’s Microsoft Office co-editing feature makes it possible for teams to collaborate simultaneously, directly from desktop or mobile. “If we assign a document to a group, all the group members can see it, comment on it, propose changes, and approve it.” The last piece of the puzzle for Hydro, Shafi says, is adopting Egnyte Sign, which will replace a separate tool the team had been using for e-signatures and speed up the approval process even further. And once each document has made its way to the manufacturing floor, engineers are able to stay in the loop as well, says Shafi.

Along with consolidating over 27 terabytes of data into Egnyte’s secure cloud server, Shafi says Egnyte’s Snapshot-Based Ransomware Recovery tool has been a game-changer. “On the IT side, Egnyte provides the best solution in that area. We’re able to retain files for 120 days or more, and that’s been wonderful.” 

Benefits: Safer, Faster Collaboration Among Critical Stakeholders

For Hydro, Inc.’s IT team, bringing on Egnyte was a critical turning point. Now that they don’t have to worry about constantly backing up local servers, Shafi estimates the IT team saves upwards of 16 hours each week. “We don’t have a huge IT staff, so any amount of time saved is valuable. Those old processes used to clog up the day, but now our team has the breathing room they need.” And as Network Administrator Suneel Raju Kottarathill adds, having one source of truth makes document permissions and access a breeze. “Before Egnyte, we had a Windows-based file server, so everyone had access to everything,” he explains. “With Egnyte, I can set permissions at the micro level. And if someone deletes a file or downloads a folder they weren’t supposed to, we get an alert and can restore everything easily. Our data is much safer now.”  

Ultimately, this updated data ecosystem enables Hydro to seamlessly deliver its final certifications to clients, no matter how large those files are. “We document everything that was done to a tee, because there are a lot of calculations, measurements, and pictures of each component,” says Shafi. “We have to be able to prove what changed, how it changed, and what kind of efficiency our client will gain.”

Shafi says it’s not just internal and client collaboration that has become much simpler with Egnyte. When Hydro needs to collaborate with regulators auditing its nuclear clients, teams can quickly put together files and update permissions. “We used to provide auditors with files on a thumb drive, but now we can dump everything in one folder on Egnyte and provide them with a standard user license. It’s fully paperless, which is very good for us.”

Looking ahead, Shafi says Hydro’s teams are excited to continue exploring what Egnyte can do, especially when it comes to monetizing their vast amount of data. “Egnyte helps us do a lot more than just store files,” he says. “It’s a true back-end solution for us.” As the company experiments with different Egnyte features, Suneel says Egnyte’s user support team and resources have been invaluable companions. “To put it simply, Egnyte just makes our lives easier.”

White Arkitekter is a Swedish architecture firm headquartered in Göteborg with nine offices across Sweden, as well as one in Germany and the UK. In 2017, the firm was looking to modernize its technology infrastructure. After trying multiple solutions, the firm ultimately landed on Egnyte, owing largely to Egnyte’s file sharing functionality, security and compliance posture, and proven ability to stay on the cutting edge of product and feature development.

Since then, White and Egnyte have been by each other’s side through workflow changes, feature enhancements, and a global pandemic.

Challenge: Modernize an Aging IT Environment

Prior to Egnyte, White used local file servers in combination with tools such as Dropbox, WeTransfer and Cryptshare for file sharing. Across a team of roughly 800 users, the feedback was nearly unanimous: The user experience that these tools offered left much to be desired. It created what Systems Administrator Fredrik Persson calls a “shadow IT” environment, in which “people took the liberty of using other products that worked better, which created a huge mess – we had no continuity in the systems people were using.”

Nowhere was the user experience problem more apparent than in situations requiring external collaboration. Persson offers an anecdote: “When we wanted to collaborate or share something with external partners, we had to get a computer set up for our interface and workflow and actually mail the computer to that person.”

The team knew something needed to change. They began a process of interrogating all the products in their technology stack in search of opportunities to modernize.

Solution: Collaboration and Project Management through Egnyte

The team brought in a set of file sharing and collaboration tools for a comprehensive vendor selection process. They started with Dropbox, Citrix ShareFile, Egnyte, and several others. Eventually, all of these were dismissed except for ShareFile and Egnyte. “We decided to stress test these two systems against each other,” Persson explains. “We set up different scenarios and brought in different people to try them out. Eventually, we went with Egnyte.”

Though they may not have known it at the time, this was the start of a partnership that has been steadily delivering more and more benefits to White Arkitekter for eight years and counting. The longevity of this relationship owes largely to the ease of internal and external collaboration in Egnyte compared to ShareFile, Dropbox, or the firm’s previous on-prem infrastructure. For example, instead of literally mailing a physical computer to external collaborators, the team can “share files via secure links or even invite them into our centralized Egnyte domain so they can access files themselves,” as Arvid Vessman, Service Owner, Digital Workplace at White Arkitekter, puts it.

White also leveraged Egnyte in the creation of what the firm calls “White Spaces.” These are project-specific web interfaces integrated with an arsenal of critical apps – including Egnyte, Slack, Microsoft tools, and more – that White creates as a storage and collaboration environment for each project. Egnyte’s role in facilitating White Spaces was monumental. “With Egnyte, we can set up an intuitive folder structure that we can then deploy across our White Spaces, so that each project has its own predefined structure,” says Vessman. “This gives us a head start; we don’t have to recreate the wheel each time we create a White Space. That makes things really easy for our users, which has been a big win in our adoption rate.”

When Covid-19 arrived, many companies experienced tremendous disruption, as teams were suddenly dispersed away from the office and into their homes. But Egnyte’s remote file sharing and granular permissions functionality enabled White to continue working on critical content without interruption. As Vessman says, “Egnyte’s cloud infrastructure makes it easily accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, which meant our users could still get into their White Spaces and keep working after Covid-19 sent them home. The platform also lets us see where each file lies and set permissions governing which files can be shared externally. That prevents any improper sharing even when people are using their home computers miles away from our IT team.”

Benefits: The Technology Partnership of White Arkitekter’s Dreams

Through major moments of growth and change over the past eight years, Egnyte has been by White Arkitekter’s side. When it came time to modernize the company’s infrastructure, or build its White Spaces strategy, or manage the dispersal of its workforce during the pandemic, Egnyte has been there, ready to help the firm achieve its goals.

And in between those moments of change, improvements and additions to Egnyte have also deepened the companies’ connection. “When we look at the release notes, we’re reminded of all the ways Egnyte has improved in the time we’ve been using the platform,” says Persson. 

Vessman adds: “These improvements have allowed our use of Egnyte to expand. Where we initially were using it for file sharing and visibility, our work in Egnyte has become much more collaborative. This has made us more effective in some projects we’re doing in Germany, for example, where we’re working not only with the client but also alongside other architectural firms in a joint venture. From co-editing to file sharing, Egnyte makes these multi-party projects run so much more smoothly.”

While user adoption of the Egnyte platform has steadily increased over the years, some users are still not making full use of the platform – not because of any functionality issue, but because Egnyte is so seamless they often don’t realize they’re using it. This is why, going forward, White plans to initiate more thorough communication about what users can achieve with Egnyte. “Many users realize we’ve shifted from local files to the cloud, but not that there’s a tool called Egnyte that has facilitated this change,” Vessman explains. “They’re now sending files via secure links instead of email attachments, which is great. Next, we want to educate them on the full breadth of workflows and use cases that are possible in Egnyte, to make sure they’re accessing the full potential of this partnership.”

For the landscape architecture firm Allen Pyke Associates, cloud infrastructure alone is not enough. The firm takes on rural, suburban, urban, and mixed-use residential developments, and when the time came to switch from local servers to cloud software for content management, the team knew they would need a system that could handle the mission-critical content that this wide range of projects rely on every day.

The firm consulted the managed services provider Generation IT, who recommended Egnyte as the best system to meet this need. Since then, Allen Pyke has seen nothing but success – from file management to collaboration to talent acquisition and beyond.

Challenge: Find a Cloud Provider That Can Handle Critical Content

When director James Hyde started at Allen Pyke in 2003, the company was using three or four desktops for all of its content management. As the company grew, it opened new offices around the UK, eventually expanding from desktops to two on-premises servers.
 

For a time, this arrangement worked well. The team felt their most important content was in good hands. “Our servers were good at handling the CAD drawings and Photoshop files that are essential to the work we do as a landscape architecture company,” James recalls. “These are really RAM-hungry files, and having on-site storage made it easy to access them quickly.” 
 

Eventually, however, the company’s local infrastructure began to age. Then Covid abruptly shifted the company to a remote-work model. The confluence of these forces necessitated a switch from local infrastructure to cloud-based content management. But the company had reservations about diving head-first into the cloud.
 

“Several IT providers had warned us that cloud services might not work well with the specific kind of work we do,” explains James. “There could be issues with things like file sizes and referencing.” For Allen Pyke, the challenge was to find a cloud provider that could handle the kind of content specific to the firm’s landscape architecture projects – not just generic content, such as HR documents and Excel spreadsheets, that are standard across industries

Solution: Partner with Egnyte Through Generation IT

Around this time, the team connected with Generation IT, a managed services provider and Egnyte partner, to help Allen Pyke navigate this content management crossroads. GenIT assured the team that cloud-based content management could, in fact, serve Allen Pyke’s needs – given the right provider. On GenIT’s recommendation, the team trialed Egnyte, and was immediately impressed with its ability to handle the company’s valuable content.
 

“Every other cloud provider we tried really struggled with our content. For example, we work a lot with AutoCAD and Adobe InDesign, which rely on xrefs and asset links, and these providers couldn’t deal with that,” James explains. “But with Egnyte, there’s no issue. Files open up just like before, and with no lag.”
 

Collaboration is a major component of Allen Pyke’s content management workflows. The team shares business-critical content, much of which requires very large file sizes, with external stakeholders including clients, consultants, CGI artists, and more. Egnyte’s remote collaboration functionality makes this a breeze. The team can set granular permissions to folders and files so that the right stakeholders in any location have instant access to files of any size. As James explains: “Previously, for large file sizes, we’d use a system like WeTransfer, which is slow and difficult to navigate. Or our clients would be using half a dozen different systems that were hard to keep track of. But with Egnyte, we just give them access to a folder, or send them a link, and they immediately have access to the latest version of the file.”
 

James also speaks to the ways in which, by facilitating remote collaboration, Egnyte’s cloud system has strengthened Allen Pyke’s talent acquisition. “Today, salary and benefits aren’t the only things that attract workers. Work-life balance and the flexibility to work from outside the office are big drivers as well. I recently was able to plug in and get work done while I was at the shop waiting for my car to be serviced. That kind of flexibility is huge today, and if we don’t offer it, our competitors will.”

Benefits: Single Global Office for Mission-Critical Content

By clearing a smooth path for remote collaboration on files in Autodesk AutoCAD, Adobe InDesign, and other systems Allen Pyke depends on to conduct its business, Egnyte has turned the company’s constellation of offices and stakeholders into a single global office in the cloud. Critically, Egnyte has received nothing but glowing feedback from users across the company. “Egnyte has a folder structure that’s really similar to what we were used to,” James says. “People tell us that the only difference between Egnyte and what we had before is that Egnyte is actually faster.”
 

This is a testament not only to Egnyte’s intuitiveness, but also to the work that GenIT put in to get everything set up for the transition. As James says: “Since we brought GenIT in, they’ve been invaluable in helping us achieve what we needed to achieve. From helping us improve our infrastructure to our day-to-day operations, every time we need something, they make it happen.”
 

Alan McIntosh, CEO at Generation IT, adds: “Our differentiator as an MSP is that we see ourselves as a virtual CTO. We partner with organizations like Allen Pyke that are incredible at what they do but may lack some of the technical knowhow to achieve their IT goals. Our goal is to bridge that gap.”
 

Now that Allen Pyke’s critical project content is hosted on Egnyte, the company plans to transition its administrative content currently housed on SharePoint. “It’s become a bit problematic, because people are now used to sharing files on Egnyte, and in fact prefer that, but have to switch over to a different platform for administrative content,” James explains. “So one of our 2025 goals is to move the admin content to Egnyte as well. We want to have everything in one place, and that place should be Egnyte.”
 

In explaining that assessment, James returns to Egnyte’s prowess at handling the content that other on-prem and cloud platforms struggle with, but which are central to Allen Pyke’s business: “We were facing so many infrastructural constraints when working with the kinds of files that drive a design business forward. Egnyte takes away all those constraints.”

In the financial holdings world, Wintrust Financial Corp is a model of diversification. With $64 billion in assets, the company has 16 chartered community banks as well as non-bank businesses offering an array of services including lending, wealth management, insurance finance, and beyond.

Successful content management across this vast landscape required a technology partner that could help the company build a well-rounded data governance strategy. With Egnyte as that partner, that’s exactly what Wintrust did.

Challenge: Build a Culture and Strategy Around Data Governance

The first sign that Wintrust’s technology was in need of change came from its file sharing practices. The solution the company was using for secure sharing, ShareFile, was clunky and riddled with issues.

As Michael Lambert, Chief Innovation Officer at Wintrust, puts it: “ShareFile just wasn’t intuitive. Users had trouble logging in, and there was no single sign-on. There was long downtime with every software update. We had limited visibility into what was being shared, when, and by whom. There were missing links and files, and the support services weren’t great.” These issues depressed user adoption of the solution and led to users sharing files without security protections, creating untenable risk for the company.
 

But addressing this issue was just one aspect of Wintrust’s larger mandate: to create a well-rounded and well-planned data governance strategy that would ensure true data ownership and responsible content management practices. This was critical given the volume of the company’s data, as well as the wide variety of stakeholders who would be sharing and managing it across Wintrust’s offices and business segments. “If we only focused on secure file sharing, we would ultimately have to replace whatever solution we went with as other needs arose,” says Lambert.

Solution: An Egnyte-Powered, User-Friendly Governance Strategy

Lambert’s team got to work on a plan to set policies across every key aspect of data governance – all in a way that would be accessible and understandable enough to ensure company-wide buy-in. Implementing the plan required thorough internal communication as well as replacing both ShareFile and Wintrust’s on-premises file server with Egnyte, which offered the intuitiveness, functionality, and partnership required to facilitate good governance and user adoption.

• Communication
  The success of Wintrust’s data governance strategy depended on employees having a clear understanding of why governance actually matters. Lambert understood that this should not be taken for granted. “Users don’t typically put much conscious thought into what data exists, where it exists, and who has access to it. They were shocked to see how broad Wintrust’s permissions landscape was,” Lambert says. “There’s also a pervasive assumption that all files need to be stored forever, which isn’t true. So we did a lot of work educating them about retention and the importance of drawing lines between what we need to keep and what we don’t. When we switched to Egnyte, it was a chance to show examples of files that don’t need to come with us in the migration.”
  Communicating major company-wide policy and technology changes requires trust and sensitivity, which is why Lambert’s team took care to work with trusted leaders, tailoring communication to each department. As he explains: “Different departments handle things like file sharing in different ways, so we made sure to find champions within each department, understand their needs, and channel our communication through them, instead of having IT dictate to the whole company.” 
   
• Egnyte’s role
  The functionality of Egnyte’s cloud-hosted file management system – particularly its Secure and Govern tool – facilitated every aspect of Wintrust’s data governance ambitions. “We organized data between personal and shared directories, and separated collaboration into its own space. Egnyte makes it easy to establish access permissions and data retention periods across these different environments and departments, execute on them, and make exceptions when necessary,” Lambert explains. “Its search functionality makes data discovery a breeze, so we don’t have to guess where something is stored. Its sensitive content detection and ransomware functionality help us stay on top of anything unusual. And it provides constant visibility into who has access to what data, where it’s stored, and who put it there.”

Benefits: Good Data Governance with Buy-In Across the Company

With a smart strategy, robust communication, and Egnyte in their corner, Lambert’s team has added structure to Wintrust’s unstructured data. The company has established a culture of true data ownership, exercised through Egnyte, across each department.

Critically, thanks to the policy-driven lifecycle management Egnyte has facilitated, the company’s storage requirements have hardly increased, even while its assets over the past five years have grown by $20 billion and its workforce by 2,000 employees. “We’re much better positioned to control the movement of files throughout our organization, as well as how much data we’re storing,” Lambert says. “And we’re able to do all of this with more confidence than we’ve ever had.”

One major factor enabling this level of control is Egnyte’s unusual activity monitoring and alerts. “Egnyte’s monitoring system quickly uncovers things like large file movements or deletions,” explains Lambert. “That information allows us to talk to the user, determine if the activity was unintentional or malicious, and act quickly to mitigate any impacts. This process used to take months – now it’s immediate. Egnyte’s integration with Splunk has added further efficiency, centralizing alerts from all our systems in one place. And the users are grateful to be aware and able to help in recovery, which speaks to the strong culture of data governance and ownership that we’ve created.”

The company is now finalizing cleanup of its historical and technical debt. Lambert’s team is further maturing their processes with department champions to review data over time and increase automation of data loss prevention. None of this would be possible without the ease of use and broad functionality that Egnyte provides. “Systems with issues don’t get adopted,” Lambert says. “Users avoid them. That’s the problem we faced before. We don’t face it with Egnyte.”