Honor Health Network, a fast-growing network of community-oriented healthcare services, was up to its ears in paper. From patient forms to job applications, the company relied on physical folders storing paper documents, with chaotic results in content management, organization, and the allocation of office space.

That all changed when the company partnered with Jotform, a web-based form builder, and Egnyte, a provider of cloud-hosted content management software. Through the elegant integration of their two services, Jotform and Egnyte digitized Honor Health’s forms and cloud-enabled its workflows, streamlining operations for 10,000 users across countless offices and patient homes.

Challenge: Find a Digital Alternative for Messy Paper Workflows

Honor Health’s reliance on paper created numerous inefficiencies that caused the amount of time the team spent on document management to balloon. It also posed serious risks of document loss and threats to data integrity.

“To share documents among our different offices and home health aides, people would have to drive from place to place to pick up their files. Less tech-savvy staff members and patients would even print out forms, fill them out, and drive to their local library to fax them in,” explains Kayla S., Service Center Manager at Honor Health Network. “Then there’s the human error issue. Files would get lost. Offices would fill up with file cabinets containing documents that were often poorly organized. Missing or incorrect data would go undetected until the next audit. This forced us to spend valuable time chasing people down and correcting mistakes.”

It was clear that, to gain better control over their files and make better use of their time, Honor Health would need to digitize. However, not just any digital solution would suffice. “As a health network, a lot of our files contain people’s PHI, PII, and other highly sensitive data,” says Matt Koveleski, Director of IT at Honor Health. “We needed something cloud-based and secure, so that we could see and control who has access to what documents and so people wouldn’t have to rely on VPN connections to access data from other offices or patients’ homes.”

Solution: Digitize Forms with Jotform, Manage in Egnyte

Honor Health had previously implemented Egnyte’s cloud-based content management system as a replacement for a physical server the team was using for active directory. “We used to have to attach a SonicWall VPN client to home aides’ and office workers’ computers, and Egnyte freed us from that,” explains Koveleski. To digitize their forms, Honor Health kicked off a two-pronged plan that involved integrating Egnyte with Jotform. Jotform embeds forms directly into websites and apps for easy online submission, nullifying the need for paper forms. When a patient, staff member, or job applicant submits a form, Jotform automatically sends the submitted data into Egnyte, where it can be managed intuitively, securely, and efficiently.

“Jotform offers tons of features, like Jotform Tables and Approvals, that really reduce the time it takes people to fill out forms,” comments Kayla. “For example, conditional logic condenses forms based on the answers people enter. When someone enters their mailing address, they can check a box that says it’s the same as their home address, and the home address field disappears. The conditional logic feature can also automatically route an email based on the office of the form filler, which is huge.”

Jotform also enabled patients and aides to complete and submit forms remotely from their mobile devices — a major benefit for a company that largely provides care at patients’ homes rather than in the office. “People can access forms via a Jotform link without needing their own account or login, and fill them out on their personal devices,” Kayla explains. “That way, we don’t have to email forms for people to print out, complete, and fax back to us.”

Once forms are submitted, Egnyte organizes and displays them in a simple folder structure that appears on users’ desktops as a common mapped file drive. This made finding and accessing files easy — even for less tech-savvy users. “If someone wants to see how many people completed a form, they can find the form within Egnyte very quickly and easily,” says Kayla.

It wasn’t just easy to find and access files. Egnyte enabled team members to share files securely as well — a critical capability for a company that handles so much sensitive data. “With Egnyte, I can control exactly who has access to which folders, and disable access at any time,” explains Koveleski. “Egnyte also alerts me to anomalies, like someone accessing a file from outside the country or someone deleting large amounts of data. There are times when we need to provide someone, including third parties, access to PHI, so it’s great to have the visibility to ensure everything is handled properly.”

Benefits: The IT Workflow Necessary for Successful Acquisitions

Since integrating Egnyte and Jotform, Honor Health Network has created efficiencies that have improved the user experience for patients and employees alike. As Kayla puts it: “The office staff is happier because they don’t have to spend time searching through file cabinets for a particular file or chasing people down to correct mistakes. Home aides are happier because it’s much easier to get forms completed and submitted. And the simple folder structure Egnyte provides means we don’t have to give everyone extra training on navigating the backend of Jotform to find files.”

The team has also enjoyed the peace of mind that all stakeholders are able to manage files securely. “Egnyte and Jotform Enterprise in combination are such a powerful force for improving our workflows,” says Koveleski. “Egnyte’s Secure and Govern features help us manage how content is shared, and Jotform’s HIPAA-specific forms allow us to keep tabs on exactly where sensitive HIPAA information is stored. Things are fast, easy, and secure across the board.”

The new workflow has even helped facilitate Honor Health’s continued growth by accelerating the process of applying for jobs there. “Applying to work with us previously involved filling out and signing each individual form in a 20-page packet,” Kayla says. “Now that it’s digitized in Jotform Enterprise, all someone has to do is enter a piece of information once and it replicates across every form where that information is needed. After it’s submitted, Egnyte makes it easy for HR to organize and access each person’s application materials.”

The Honor Health team expects the integrated solution to be a major part of their workflow going forward. “I loved Egnyte right when I saw it, and our CEO did too,” Koveleski says. “And Jotform Enterprise has been absolutely indispensable. Putting the two together is all we could ever ask for.”

Cybersecurity and content governance are paramount when managing a city –something the government of Fullerton, a city in Southern California with over 140,000 residents, understands well.

After switching from an on-premises file server to Egnyte’s cloud-hosted system, the City has gained critical visibility into the content lifecycle, with the assurance that sensitive data stored across various city departments is restricted to the proper stakeholders.

Challenge: Strengthen Data Security with Cloud Technology

Like any city government, the City of Fullerton is responsible for managing and safeguarding a wealth of highly sensitive information. “The City’s databases include people’s PII, HIPAA data, payment card, industry data, and more,” says Marty Miller, Chief Technology Officer at Glass Box Technology, an IT provider hired by the City. “As just one example, the Police Department regularly gets involved with subpoenas, which involve a lot of personal information.”

To store this information, the City was using an on-premises Windows file server that lacked critical features around security and governance. Miller’s team wanted more confidence in their ability to track the City’s data or share it with internal and external parties securely. “Our goal is to understand, across various city departments and external stakeholders, when sensitive data has been loaded onto the platform, where exactly it’s stored, and who has access,” explains Miller. “The legacy system didn’t give us this information. It also didn’t have any sort of content controls to prevent inappropriate disclosure.”

To gain the level of control necessary to maintain a strong security posture, all signs pointed to the cloud. Miller’s team began reviewing cloud-based alternatives to their on-premises server, including Dropbox and OneDrive, but none of them met the team’s needs. “In each system we looked at, the controls we needed were either lacking or required complex rule-writing to set up,” Miller says.

Solution: Replace On-Premises File Server with Egnyte

The team began looking into Egnyte, focusing specifically on Egnyte’s sensitive data and anomaly detection capabilities. “Our question was: Do we have information in our environment that shouldn’t be there, like credit card numbers or social security numbers?” says Miller.

To find out, the team moved a subset of their data into Egnyte and ran Egnyte’s sensitive data and anomaly detection features against it. The system quickly found numerous instances of the kind of data Miller was looking for, indicated who had uploaded that data and when, and displayed a measurement of the City’s risk level based on the findings. “That was proof that Egnyte could give us the visibility we wanted,” Miller explains.

With the success of the test run, the team decided Egnyte would be the perfect cloud-hosted replacement for their on-premises server. Miller describes implementing the system and migrating data to the new environment as stress-free. “The implementation was really straightforward. It took maybe four weeks to prep, and just a week to migrate the entire organization.”

Once the system was in place, Glass Box brought in Aaron Fry to serve as Chief Technology Officer and oversee IT operations citywide. Fry was immediately impressed with Egnyte’s capabilities not just in sensitive data and anomaly detection, but in ransomware detection as well. “If someone moves or deletes a large number of files, or if there’s a ransomware signal, not only does an alert appear on our dashboard, but our security team gets a notification,” Fry explains. “Those alerts automatically feed into our help desk ticketing system so the team can track and investigate.”

Secure content sharing was another critical capability that set Egnyte apart. Egnyte allowed the team to provision access to specific files and folders to specific individuals, or to set access permissions based on parameters such as role or title. The team could then share files to the appropriate stakeholders via secure links or by sending invitations to collaborate. “Egnyte provides a really simple process for external sharing,” Miller explains. “We just have to set up an external folder and make the appropriate person the owner of that folder, which enables them to invite others to collaborate securely on the documents.”

Benefits: Clear Oversight and Control over Sensitive Content

With its data in the cloud, where it’s subject to Egnyte’s Secure and Govern features and access controls, the City has gained confidence that its environment is safe and properly managed. “We can now find and remove prohibited data from the system in a heartbeat. And if we see other sensitive and protected data in the system, we don’t fret,” Miller says. “We can see exactly where it is and who put it there and know that we have the security features in place to make sure only the right people have access.”

The improvement over their old on-premises system is stark. “Without a properly configured, sanctioned, centralized tool like Egnyte, and the content controls and Secure and Govern features it offers, there would be much less security in the way people store and share content,” comments Fry. “Egnyte gives us the confidence that City workers can access files from various devices, share them internally and externally, and meet the needs of a modern workplace, all without compromising on security.”

“People can even conduct these workflows outside of the office,” adds Miller. “If a Department Head or someone from the Police Department is out with an iPad, they can just hit their Okta dashboard, click the tile, and access their data in Egnyte.”

For the workers’ part, their experience with Egnyte has been purely positive. “There was no resistance from the team. Egnyte feels more modern to them than what they were using before, and they appreciate that,” says Miller. “Police, Fire, HR, City Manager’s Office, Parks and Rec, and lots of other departments are all using it. It’s part of their day-to-day and they enjoy working with it.”

Egnyte has proven so reliable that Fry and Miller are now looking to establish it with the State of California as a trusted system – that is, one that can store and preserve the content loaded into it with no unauthorized alteration of the source files. This would allow the City to free up space currently dedicated to storing paper documents. “It’s a testament to the level of control Egnyte gives us over the integrity of our data, as well as the ability to know that everything we need is right where it should be,” says Fry. “It’s truly invaluable.”

Lionakis is a multidisciplinary firm specializing in architecture, engineering, planning, and interiors. Founded in 1909 by California’s first State Architect, the firm takes on large projects for private and public-sector clients.

To provide these clients with top-tier services, it’s critical for Lionakis to maintain a high level of workforce efficiency, business continuity, and content security. The firm achieves these goals with Egnyte’s cloud-based content management system. Egnyte enables Lionakis to meet faster project timelines, strengthening the firm’s reputation as a leader in its field.

Challenge: Cloud-Enable Content Management Workflow

Prior to Egnyte, the team used an on-premises Windows server to store, manage, and collaborate on project-related files. But the lack of cloud functionality impeded their workflows and posed significant risk in several areas:

• Disaster recovery
  As an AEC firm, Lionakis is constantly interacting with clients, consultants, and contractors. These conversations yield significant plan changes and time-sensitive decisions. If a natural disaster were to knock the Windows server offline, work would grind to a halt. “We’ll have a whole construction crew who can’t move forward until they hear from us about a new directive stored on a file on the server. If we can’t access those files, we could lose over a month of work,” explains Matthew Onken, IT Director at Lionakis. “That could do real reputational damage.”
• Remote collaboration
  Lionakis’s workforce is dispersed across offices and construction sites throughout California. To minimize project delays, it was critical that team members be able to communicate across geographies and access files in the field as efficiently as possible. “The Windows server turned field visits into a slog. There was a ton of latency, and folks had to rely on VPNs to access the files they needed,” says Onken. “An architect would have to photograph a jobsite on their phone, return to the office, plug in the phone, download the photo, and load it into the network. All of that, just to get one photo cataloged.”
• Onboarding acquired firms
  Acquisitions are a core pillar of Lionakis’s growth strategy. Each time a company is acquired, it needs to be integrated into Lionakis’s file sharing ecosystem–a process that was slow and clunky with the Windows file server. “We needed a better way to get acquired companies’ files onto our network,” Onken says.

Solution: Move Data from the Local Windows Server to Egnyte

Onken looked into the Egnyte cloud platform, and quickly determined it would be the ideal partner for Lionakis in its cloud enablement journey. “I liked Egnyte right away. It was easy to use, had a well-designed interface with great features, and could process large files really quickly and smoothly,” Onken says. That ease of use made for an incredibly smooth implementation process. “I wish all new technologies were as easy to implement as Egnyte,” comments Kristina Williams, Director of Design Technology at Lionakis. “We had excellent support, no headaches, and everything just worked great.”

Working with Egnyte’s Professional Services, the team started migrating data from their on-premises server into Egnyte. “We migrated 16 terabytes of data in less than two weeks, with no missing data,” says Onken. From there, managing and collaborating on files of all sizes and types became exponentially easier. “Our designers loved that they could work on large Adobe Creative Suite files directly through the Egnyte drive,” Onken says. “It’s amazing how well the system performed, especially over long distances, considering the size of these files.”

By empowering the team to store, manage, and collaborate on files in the cloud instead of locally, Egnyte paved the way for efficient, uninterrupted workflows, regardless of any unforeseen events or physical distances among their dispersed stakeholders. “When we load files into Egnyte, they go straight to the cloud, so even if our local technology is disabled, our team can still access their files and keep working,” explains Onken. “And architects at remote construction sites can load and access files instantly–no VPN necessary.” Egnyte’s disaster recovery abilities extended beyond natural occurrences like floods or fires. As Onken says: “I was impressed with Egnyte’s data governance tools and ability to recover from ransomware attacks, which you don’t often see on a typical local file server.”

Lionakis uses multiple technology products, and so it was critical that Egnyte work well with the rest of its stack. “Our team really appreciated Egnyte’s third-party integration capabilities, particularly with Microsoft Office,” says Onken. “And Revit worksharing for files outside of BIM 360 and Autodesk Construction Cloud on Egnyte has been seamless.” Egnyte’s Storage Sync product enabled the team to cloud-enable their workflows in Newforma, a critical software partner that often doesn’t work well with cloud-hosted file management systems. “Storage Sync allowed us to sync our files down from the cloud and present them just like a Windows SMB file server would, so Newforma could work with it,” says Onken. “People could store files in Egnyte and have them indexed in Newforma. That’s unique among cloud-based content management products I’ve seen.”

Benefits: Disruption-Free Content Workflows Powered by the Cloud

Thanks to the efficiency and business continuity Egnyte has facilitated, clients know that working with Lionakis means faster services and no unpleasant surprises. “Egnyte has unlocked tons of time savings that add up to condensed project timelines. That strengthens our competitive advantage,” says Onken. “It used to take forever for people in satellite offices to open PDFs shared from our local server in Sacramento, but with Egnyte, it’s instantaneous. And we don’t have to waste time connecting to VPNs just to do our work.”

Field architects and designers can now upload photos and other documents to the system in seconds without having to return to the office–a new efficiency that benefits stakeholders in other areas such as design. “We love the rapid photo upload feature from mobile phones directly to our mapped drives,” Williams says. “Egnyte has enabled us to move 100% of our design production files to the cloud.”

Onken’s disaster recovery concerns have all but vanished in the wake of the team’s switch to Egnyte. He now has confidence that neither disaster nor human error can significantly impede the team’s ability to move projects forward. “I’m sleeping much easier now that I know work can continue even in the event of a flood or fire,” Onken says. “Even if someone accidentally deletes an important file, I can just use Egnyte’s search tool to find and restore it.”

Egnyte’s Storage Sync product, in addition to solving the Newforma issue, has facilitated the acquisitions that are so central to Lionakis’s growth. “When we acquire a company, we no longer have to fret about how we’re going to connect all the different networks,” explains Onken. “Storage Sync gives us an easy answer. We can use it to capture all the data from the acquired firm and sync it right up to Egnyte.”

Lionakis CFO Andy Deeble is seeing tremendous business value. "More than ever, to effectively serve our clients and fulfill project requirements, our teams need to work effectively across multiple locations. The flexibility Egnyte provides our business is foundational to maintaining connectivity across the firm and eliminating geographic constraints as we pursue our growth objectives.

Looking ahead, Onken plans to keep educating the team on the myriad ways Egnyte can enhance their workflows. “Egnyte does so much,” Onken says. “There’s always more to discover.”

Sila Services, a mid-sized HVAC, plumbing, and electrical company, has a strong record of attracting high-value capital investments to elevate their business. After the private equity firm Dubin Clark acquired the company in 2019, Sila boosted its valuation through the acquisition of several additional companies.

Engaging in mergers and acquisitions at this level requires a tremendous amount of due diligence involving extensive review of documentation, from legal, to environmental, to HR. Guided by their managed services provider, Network Coverage, Sila leveraged Egnyte to develop an easy, cost-effective, and secure workflow for the exchange of acquisition data.

Challenge: Inefficient Data Exchange Imperils Acquisition

Steve Zimmerman worked as Chief Information Officer for several platform companies owned by Dubin Clark until the acquisition of Sila Services, at which point he was put in charge of IT at Sila as CIO. With experience both in IT and private equity, he knows how critical – and challenging – the due diligence process is ahead of an acquisition.

“We’ve purchased 21 companies. In each case, we had to review their IT platform, payroll info, financial statements, and myriad other documents spread across Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint decks, you name it,” Zimmerman explains. “When we first began making these acquisitions, we had to pay to access this information through a secure data room provided by a third party. Doing this for each acquisition would have been cost-prohibitive.

To bypass the third-party data rooms, the team tried using VPNs to connect each acquired company’s file server and directory to Sila’s Citrix instance. But this created headaches of its own: “To adjust access permissions to a document, we’d have to go through cumbersome, time-consuming manual processes like writing a Group Policy Object,” says Dustin Krauss, Director of Service Operations at Network Coverage.

This permissions issue was critical. “There’s a lot of scrutiny around security during acquisitions,” Zimmerman explains. “We’re dealing, potentially, with people’s personal health and financial information. Plus, companies typically want to be discreet about their ongoing acquisition activity.”

Solution: Build a Secure Portal for Exchanging Data in Egnyte

The Sila Services and Network Coverage teams evaluated Egnyte’s content management system, conducted a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, and concluded that Egnyte was ideal for facilitating communication in M&A situations. “Several of our clients already used Egnyte,” Krauss says. “So I’d seen how effective it is for file sharing and collaboration.”

Zimmerman struck a similar note regarding Network Coverage: “Dubin Clark had had successful experiences with Network Coverage at several of our subsidiaries. I knew I could trust their IT recommendations at Sila.”

Sila set up Egnyte as a secure, centralized, cloud-based data portal where the variety of stakeholders in an acquisition can quickly upload and review all the information. “The portal served as the go-to place for parent companies and subsidiaries, as well as attorneys and auditors, to load and review documents,” says Zimmerman.

The team programmed the Egnyte system to send real-time email notifications to internal and external stakeholders each time someone uploaded a relevant document for review. This allowed everyone to stay apprised of developments during the acquisition. As Zimmerman explains: “Our partners want to see progress. An acquisition can take months to complete, and these alerts help move the review process along. If, say, a document indicates a company carries high insurance costs and thus calls the acquisition into question, we want that document to be seen sooner than later.”

After uploading the data, Sila leveraged Egnyte’s granular access permissions functionality to keep that data secure and ensure that only the proper stakeholders can access it. As Zimmerman explains: “I can give someone access to a particular document, but limit that access to a specific folder or set of folders within a data room, rather than an all-or-nothing situation.” This allowed Sila to further engage in M&A activity while maintaining the proper guardrails around sensitive personal and proprietary information.

All the while, the Egnyte platform has offered an intuitive user experience – a major benefit for less tech-savvy users. “Once we built the portal, all we had to do was send out invitations to people we wanted to give access to,” says Zimmerman. “And Egnyte makes it easy for individuals of all IT skill levels to upload all sorts of data.”

Benefits: The IT Workflow Necessary for Successful Acquisitions

Egnyte has empowered Sila to ensure that all of their information is well-organized and secure, which is critical for successful M&A. “Parent companies want to know where all of the information is stored, whether it’s secure, and how it’s broken down,” says Zimmerman. “With Egnyte, we were able to store all our data safely within a single set of repositories in the Egnyte environment, instead of some information existing on one server, some on another, and some in the cloud.”

“When companies get acquired and then acquire others, they need to integrate as fast as humanly possible,” adds Eric Tomah, Chief Information Officer at Network Coverage. “Leveraging Egnyte’s SaaS-based platform has made the integration effectively seamless for Sila.”

Zimmerman places Network Coverage at the heart of Sila’s IT success story: “Our IT environment across a number of acquired companies, as well as our IT corporate platform, is managed by Network Coverage, and we would not have partnered with them if we weren’t certain they could get the job done. As we expand across multiple geographies, Network Coverage supports that expansion seamlessly.”

Since implementing Egnyte, Sila’s use of the Egnyte platform has grown to cover virtually their entire portfolio. “Thousands of individuals have received invitations to load documentation into the Egnyte portal and have never faced difficulties in doing so,” says Zimmerman. “The data is encrypted, secure, and has never been compromised.”

Tomah looks back on how far the team has come: “The secure portal we helped Sila build with Egnyte is now the primary engine running their acquisition services. It’s a huge win for everyone involved.”

As the owner of signature commercial properties on both the East and West Coasts, Paramount, a leading real estate investment trust, is responsible for storing, managing, and reporting on terabytes of real estate records at any given time.

Partnering with Egnyte, Paramount seamlessly migrated their files from an on-premises file server to a cloud-hosted solution fit to handle these large volumes of complex data. As a result, they realized benefits in security, collaboration, and regulatory reporting — all while maintaining a top-notch user experience.

Challenge: Large Content Volumes Require Cloud-based Efficiencies

Managing Paramount’s real estate portfolio involves a lot of complex record-keeping. “When you own a two-million-square-foot building, there’s a lot going on,” comments Todd Januzzi, SVP, Chief Information and Technology Officer at Paramount Group. “There are multiple cell providers and internet providers in the building, and we keep all of those license agreements. We also keep every closing document, lease, invoice, insurance document, and SEC document, to name a few.”

To store these documents, Paramount relied on an on-premises file server. But storage was just one part of the equation—the team also needed to share and collaborate on files with internal and external stakeholders, control access to the information the files contained, and give regulators visibility into the content lifecycle.

Januzzi started looking for a cloud-hosted replacement for the on-premises server, with a particular focus on:

• Security and access controls
• Collaboration
• User experience

The team tried several cloud-hosted solutions, including Box, ShareFile, and Microsoft OneDrive — all of which fell short. “These systems were often tough to administer, and the performance was poor,” explains Januzzi. “Syncing was slow and confusing; people would inadvertently be looking at outdated versions of files because the current version hadn’t yet synced from their desktops to the cloud.” The team also struggled with the cloud-hosted systems their partners were using, particularly in the AEC space. “Our AEC partners tend to live and die by Dropbox,” Januzzi says. “The only problem is that most of the phishing campaigns we’ve seen are from Dropbox. So we didn’t feel comfortable with that either.”

Solution: Full Control and a Smooth User Experience with Egnyte

During a front-to-back test of Egnyte’s functionality, Paramount discovered that the system outperformed other cloud solutions across the board, especially in their highest-priority areas:

• Security and access controls
  Given the sensitivity of Paramount’s content, it’s essential that their system provide control over who can access content and how. Egnyte empowered Paramount to set access permissions at a highly granular level, controlling who could view, modify, and delete files — all while virtually eliminating reliance on IT. As Januzzi explains: “We love that Egnyte enables the owner of a folder to grant rights to that folder versus putting in a support ticket to have an IT administrator do it. We have a small IT staff, so this is a really powerful time- and effort-saver.”
• Collaboration
  Facilitating seamless remote collaboration was essential for Paramount. “We work with a lot of AEC vendors on plan work and architectural submissions, which require input from attorneys, IT consultants, property managers, and others,” explains Januzzi. “With Egnyte, we don’t have to send Word documents to a dozen people over email and make new versions each time something is changed. We can all work off one version, which updates in real time, and which we can share via secure links.”
• User experience
  Egnyte appeared on Paramount’s servers as a mapped drive letter, just like their previous on-premises system, easing the learning curve and allowing the team to preserve the workflows they were accustomed to. “While it’s much more secure and efficient, the experience in navigating the system is actually similar to on-prem,” explains Januzzi. “The user experience as a whole with Egnyte is second to none. Whether you’re using a file explorer environment or web or mobile, it’s totally seamless.”

Once the team decided to move forward with Egnyte, it was easy to migrate their files from the previous system. “Egnyte’s migration tool is the best I’ve seen,” says Januzzi. “And onboarding is super quick and easy. When a new user comes in, the system automatically pushes them into the content drives they need to access, via an integration with Okta.”

Benefits: Happy Users, Easy Data Management, and Audit Readiness

When Paramount Group launched with Egnyte, they had 5 terabytes of data on their local drive. Since then, the team has migrated 90% of those files into Egnyte and are full-speed-ahead on completing the migration. All the while, Egnyte has delivered a user experience that has resulted in swift, 100% platform adoption among the Paramount team.

Januzzi explains how the user experience has made it easier to manage Paramount’s large and growing portfolio: “With Egnyte, we can create a standard, templatized folder structure and apply that to every building we buy. Every building is different, but this allows us to manage the related documents the same way. So if a property manager switches from one building to another, they don’t have to get acquainted with a whole new file structure. This is huge for owners of multiple properties like us.”

All-In on Egnyte

As for whether Paramount would consider other leading content management systems, Januzzi doesn’t mince words: “We do not allow Dropbox at Paramount, only Egnyte,” he says. “Egnyte is superior for sensitive content detection, detecting ransomware, collaborating on files, user experience, and the rest — full stop. A lot of AEC vendors will send us a Dropbox link, and we’ll have to tell them, sorry, but to work with us, you’ll have to use Egnyte.”

For the construction management firm John Moriarty and Associates (JMA), effective collaboration is the key to success. The firm’s myriad projects depend on the ability of multiple stakeholders, in offices and in-the-field sites across the country, to share and co-edit large construction documents quickly and at any time.

With the support of their managed service provider, Network Coverage, JMA implemented Egnyte to manage and collaborate on these files, moving away from an on-premises file server hosted by Windows. As a result, they neutralized a host of challenges in data capacity, version control, cybersecurity, and beyond.

Challenges: Local File Server Hobbles Remote Collaboration

JMA typically tackles large, intensive projects such as high-rise residential buildings or complex healthcare facilities. Large construction projects involve large construction documents, with multiple dispersed stakeholders making frequent updates to files as projects progress. “We’ll have construction workers and architects in the field, as well as folks in the office, all collaborating on massive, 400-page building plans,” explains Ted Neary, Information Technology Manager at JMA. “When we were using a Windows file server, any time a field worker needed to access a file or view an update, they would have to go to the on-site trailer to either make their updates or connect to the Windows system via VPN to get the updated version. It was a real time suck.”

Eventually, between the proliferation of file versions and the sizes of the files themselves, storage capacity on the Windows system became a concern. “We were constantly having to work with JMA to invest in more infrastructure and storage hardware,” says Eric Tomah, Chief Information Officer at Network Coverage.

Even worse, the Windows server provided no way for the team to exchange files between the office and in-the-field workers—a frequent necessity in a collaboration-intensive industry like construction management—other than via email attachments. This was both impractical given the enormous file sizes the team worked with, and unacceptable from a security perspective. “The size of the attachments through emails was really limited,” comments Neary. Tomah adds: “If a subcontractor or a worker in the field needed a document from the office, they’d have to receive it as an attachment, download it locally, and open it. This was really time-consuming, and posed a big security risk, as you’re basically at the mercy of your email provider and whatever encryption they do, or don’t, have.”

Solution: Replace Windows with Egnyte’s Cloud-Based Solution

JMA met with Network Coverage to explore a cloud-based alternative to Windows, one that could facilitate smooth and secure collaboration without capacity and versioning roadblocks. “We met with JMA regularly to provide strategic guidance in areas like technology and cybersecurity,” says Tomah. “Through these dialogues, it became clear that Egnyte, a solution we’d vetted for years and recommended to other clients, was best suited to address the issues JMA was facing.”

“We actually interviewed a number of Network Coverage’s other clients to see how they like Egnyte,” adds Neary. “They all spoke glowingly about it.” Network Coverage played a strong role in getting JMA set up on Egnyte, leading the team through planning and implementation and providing post-migration support.

Once the team was up and running, they leveraged several key aspects of Egnyte’s functionality to facilitate efficient, secure collaboration:

• Security and governance
  As files moved among project stakeholders, the team knew they would need to take steps to prevent in-transit cyberattacks and data loss. “We introduced Egnyte’s security and governance features as part of our loss prevention strategy,” comments Tomah. “This provided alerts into potential threat actor activity. Egnyte handled all of the administration, infrastructure, updates, and availability, and it’s all centralized in the cloud, so we weren’t beholden to potentially faulty hardware.”
• Link sharing
  With their files stored in the cloud, JMA could now share and access content via password-protected links, relieving their local data storage capacity challenges and eliminating their reliance on bulky email attachments. File updates automatically synced to the cloud, so that each link always showed the latest version. “With Egnyte, the ability to send links directly to subcontractors gets rid of the limited email attachment problem,” explains Neary. “If field workers need to look at, say, one specific office on the 30th floor of a skyscraper, they can pull the plan up instantly on their iPads, rather than wait for an email attachment that might be out of date by the time they get it. That’s just huge.”
• Integration
  Like many firms in their field, JMA included the construction software provider Newforma as an integral part of their tech stack for sharing, accessing, and managing documents. Network Coverage worked with the Product teams at both Egnyte and Newforma to integrate the two platforms using Egnyte’s Public Cloud Connector. As Tomah explains: “This allowed Egnyte to function as a storage provider for Newforma, which offered a lot of flexibility in how JMA accessed the data they needed.”

Benefits: Better Collaboration and a Stronger Competitive Position

Under the guidance of Network Coverage, JMA has leveraged Egnyte to collaborate more efficiently, ensure data security, and strengthen their reputation among their clientele. “With Egnyte’s security and governance features, not to mention their reporting, auditing, and permissions management functionality, JMA is much better protected against data exfiltration and can have peace of mind when sharing data internally and externally,” says Tomah.

“Having a way for people in various geographic areas, both in the office and in the field, to share files and quickly access the latest version is critical for a distributed company like ours,” Neary adds. “It’s now so much easier for our offices in Virginia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and all over the country to collaborate in real time, without anything getting lost in transit.”

This has put JMA in a strong position to take their business to the next level. “The kinds of companies we work with want to know that their construction management firm is at the forefront of technology, and can finish projects on time and under budget,” explains Neary. “By setting us up on Egnyte, Network Coverage has enabled us to provide that assurance.”

Asked what advice he has for other companies in his field, Neary needed only a few words: “If you’re worried about data access or security, use a system like Egnyte to get your data off your basement servers and into the cloud. Your life will be much easier.”

As a leading consulting engineering firm, MG Engineering knows the importance of risk management. “We operate within a risk-averse industry,” explains Demetrios Gianniris, Associate Principal, Head of Ops and Technology at MG Engineering. “There are codes and best practices, and we strive to be nimble and innovative while keeping those in mind.”

With Egnyte, they proved that large engineering firms with large data volumes can build productive file management workflows in the cloud – while still adhering to the codes and practices their highly regulated industry demands.

Challenge: A Mixed Workflow Leads to Inefficient File Management

MG Engineering often works on over 300 simultaneous projects encompassing over 20 terabytes worth of related files, with individual files ranging up to 5.5 gigabytes in size. Initially, they were using Egnyte’s Storage Sync technology to sync this data from the cloud to their own on-premises servers.

However, they soon discovered that once all the data had been sent to their servers, managing such a large volume of files locally was highly time- and resource-intensive. “Storage Sync is perfect for teams that manage small or mid-sized volumes of data,” explains Gianniris. “But with volumes as enormous as ours, we realized we would work faster if we kept those workflows in the cloud instead of syncing to on-premises servers.”

Particularly challenging areas included:

• File backups: “Our original plan was to have a complete copy of all our data in each office, and only use the cloud to access files remotely,” says Gianniris. Given the size and volume of the files involved, creating these backups would require a tremendous expenditure of time, staffing power, storage space, and budget.
• Collaboration: The team was using a virtual private network (VPN) for much of their remote file sharing. But VPN proved ineffective at facilitating collaboration on large files – and with most workers dispersed across three offices and many others working from home, sharing files this way proved to be a slog.
• File management: For each project, the team built a digital folder structure for managing files related to that project. But storing, sharing, co-editing, and archiving files with their part-cloud, part-on-premises hybrid workflow was highly inefficient. “We had a team of people who had to scour the whole network to find specific files and move them to the right location,” says Gianniris.

Facing delays and budget shortfalls, Gianniris started exploring ways to rely more heavily on the cloud. But his primary technology partner, Autodesk, didn’t work well with the numerous cloud platforms Gianniris tried out. “Autodesk doesn’t play nice in the cloud unless you’re using their cloud offering, which, at the time, hadn’t been developed,” Gianniris explains. “So we were stuck.”

Solution: A Cloud-First File Management System in Egnyte

Gianniris knew he needed to reduce his reliance on on-premises servers. He decided to take his use of Egnyte to the next level and use the platform to build a more cloud-centric file management workflow. Though the team was reluctant at first, their reservations disappeared when they saw the results. “Once we transitioned to enterprise cloud for our document storage, we were able to work much faster and more productively, largely because Egnyte handles uploads and transfers of large files really well,” explains Gianniris. “It’s also the rare cloud platform that works well with Autodesk. All of a sudden, these massive Autodesk CAD files worked a lot better.”

The team was also impressed with Egnyte’s integration capabilities. In particular, by integrating with mxHERO, they were able to replicate their shared Microsoft Outlook inboxes in Egnyte, allowing them to remove large, storage-consuming file attachments from their local server and store those files in the cloud instead. “We rely on our Outlook inboxes every day, but we were almost completely out of storage space because of these huge attachments,” explains Anjelica Orsini, Office Manager at MG Engineering, who plays an instrumental role in managing the firm’s IT. “Storing files in Egnyte instead of Outlook, and sharing them via links rather than attachments, frees up critical space and keeps things more secure.”

Working with Egnyte’s professional services, the team also accelerated the creation of complex folder structures to house files for internal and external collaboration. “It used to take us fifteen minutes to create a folder structure, but in Egnyte, we can do it in thirty seconds or less,” says Gianniris. “All it takes is the click of a button. Considering we often do this twenty or thirty times a day, those time savings really add up.” Once the folders were built, the team was able to quickly upload and migrate files of any size into Egnyte. From there, the cloud-based system allowed them to locate files from anywhere with a quick search, rapidly share files among dispersed stakeholders, and automate file archiving. “Egnyte serves as a great hub where all of our data lives, and where all our stakeholders can communicate.”

Benefits: Faster Workflows, Reduced Spend, and Happier Clients

Since implementing Egnyte, MG Engineering has made their workflows significantly faster and more cost-effective, yielding savings from project initiation to closeout. “Being all-in on the cloud has eliminated the need to create copies of all of our files or hire a full team to take on the laborious process of locating, moving, and archiving large files on a local server,” says Gianniris. “This has allowed us to save over $50,000 every year, as well as thousands of hours that we can reinvest in more high-value activities.”

These efficiencies have also enabled MG Engineering to ensure top-notch client services. “When our clients ask us for a file, they expect to get it immediately,” Orsini explains. “With local servers and manual processes, this would take ages. But Egnyte makes it easy for us to find, access, and send documents to clients in seconds. That’s a huge benefit.”

Egnyte hasn’t only enabled MG Engineering to save digital storage space – they’re freeing up physical space as well. “Now that we’ve seen how well Egnyte handles large volumes of large files, we plan to scan all of our files, dating back years, and store them in Egnyte,” says Orsini. “We’re currently working through what were originally about 900 boxes of files, which, historically, our team would spend hours or days wading through when we needed to find something. Once it’s all in Egnyte, all those documents will be at our fingertips.”

Summing up the ways Egnyte has benefited the team, Gianniris offers an anecdote: “Since we leaned more into the cloud, I’ve had people come up to my desk and ask me, ‘Did we do something with the network? Things are suddenly running much faster.’”

 Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, GBBN Architects is an architectural design firm focused on innovation in housing, healthcare, education, and cultural venue design. With over 150 employees across five offices in Ohio, Kentucky, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and China, they strive to deliver designs that not only result in great buildings but positively impact people. With a geographically dispersed workforce, many working remotely, the need for a secure and easy-to-use file collaboration platform came into focus.

Challenge: GBBN Reaches an On-Premises Crossroads

In 2021, GBBN Architects found themselves at a crossroads. The company had on-premises N5 storage device running their virtual environment which was soon running out of support. In addition, GBBN’s Panzura appliances were also running out of support. Between the expiration of hardware and software licenses, GBBN saw an opportunity to research new technologies and providers.

At the same time, GBBN was also focused on managing company data more effectively. For example, the IT team would receive support tickets that read, “My project is gone from the network.” In helping resolve the support tickets, GBBN’s IT staff couldn’t pull data usage reports from individual staff members to diagnose the issue. Matt Birk, GBBN’s CIO, says, “Using traditional tools such as Windows search, responding to this type of support ticket could take up to two days of searching through terabytes of data to find where a project was moved.”

Another challenge to effectively manage company data was secure file collaboration. Previously, GBBN was forced to give project partners access to their network, providing a domain log-in and access to a VPN connection. Birk says, “It was challenging for our IT staff to manage connectivity. Partner users had way more access to our company data than just the project files they needed; we hoped they wouldn’t inadvertently launch a ransomware attack.” There was the additional burden of tracking whether a partner user was still employed with the firm or not, ultimately relying on the individual partners to notify the GBBN IT staff of any personnel changes. And providing VPN access to partners of smaller firms that had outsourced their IT staff was even scarier. Birk says, “Each time a new partner was added to the network, our IT team would lose more control over the users accessing our company data.”

Carefully considering the existing data challenges and knowing the opportunity, the company began researching its options, starting with Panzura, Nasuni, AWS, and Microsoft Azure. GBBN focused on their primary data requirements, specifically global file locking, stability, and security. While all solutions met all or most the basic criteria, Egnyte went beyond. Birk says, “Once we met with Egnyte, we discovered the product included many more features than the other candidates in terms of security and governance. That caught the attention of our team, especially our network administrator.”

Solution: Richer Data Usage Reporting and Collaboration Capabilities

Egnyte reporting features captured everybody’s attention. Specifically, individual staff usage data coupled with the machine learning applied to each employee’s use of data jumped out to the company. Birk says, “Egnyte has unique features we did not see with the other platforms, or at least we did not see in depth on the other platforms.”

When considering whether to renew their Project Information Management application’s license, they found overlap between features provided by Egnyte and those provided by the PIM solutions, including sending large files, download tracking, file transfer link clicks, and outside party file requests. Given the extensive range of security and governance features and Egnyte’s ability to cover critical areas served by PIM applications, GBBN decided to change to Egnyte.

Once Egnyte was deployed, GBBN found immediate value in data usage reporting. The IT team could search for file changes and get results within five seconds, not the days they were used to waiting. The team also gained additional security features built on machine learning. Birk explains, “If a user is typically opening 50 files a day, but one day they open 100 files, we get an alert. Egnyte’s features have saved us from confidential data walking out the door.” Birk continues, “Prior to Egnyte, we had no ability to audit files that were downloaded, leaving our firm to trust that no confidential or source files were taken from our network. After Egnyte was implemented, we were able to audit and report on what individuals were downloading. This new capability enabled us to reverse the trend of an abnormal download of proprietary company data. Our management team was impressed with Egnyte’s data auditing tools, and IT has really earned their keep in protecting our company’s data!”

Egnyte is also making it easier for GBBN to collaborate with other architects. According to Mike Rensing, Director of Technology, “There is no longer the need to request files or handle requests from partner firms to send files. We add partners as another team member to our data source, giving them access to the project structure.” Once partners are added to a project folder, users have full access to working project documents, making collaboration smoother. But with Egnyte, GBBN can hide and protect confidential files and folders, meaning their partners can’t access them, keeping their data secure.

Benefits: Secure Data Availability Creates a Greater Work-Life Balance

“I don’t think I’ve implemented anything in my recollection that has had as many staff come to us saying how they love the access,” says Birk. He explains one of their goals was to get rid of VPN; GBBN is now 99.9% VPN free. Another goal was to provide project managers out meeting with clients the ability to access the files they needed from iPads or iOS devices. Birk says, “Project Managers like using iPads. Egnyte is agnostic, which allows them to present projects to client leaders from any device they want. They are ecstatic about data availability, which frees them from bulky laptops, power supplies, and a VPN. They love traveling light and being able to communicate our brand more effectively.”

The availability of the data has vastly improved project site visits. Rensing says, “Our teams can go to the site, pull out their phone, snap a picture, and directly place that image file in the project folder.” He explains, “Simply filing the image where it needs to go right from the project site saves time. Teams no longer download the photos and move image files to the folder at the office. It happens right at the job site.”

“Egnyte is improving work-life balance and mobility of our staff,” Birk says. “When we bring in a new hire, they are blown away by our access and the feature set.” Rensing recalls one staff member who expressed joy in accessing files from the car. He says, “This person was delighted to be able to access work files while traveling as a passenger. Something is being done right if you get thanks for that.”

Looking at what’s next with Egnyte, GBBN Architects will be tackling the management of old project files and stale data. Birk says, “We used to search for old folders on our projects drive to determine which ones were not being accessed in the past year. We are looking at Egnyte to automatically identify project files that have not been touched for a given amount of time and move them off active storage to archival storage. That will save space and money.”

Established in 1949, Barnhill Contracting Company offers commercial building, site infrastructure, transportation, and asphalt services throughout the southeastern United States and is consistently ranked among ENR's Top Contractors in the country. Headquartered in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the company has several statewide offices and over 900 employees.

With an average of 90 active projects on Procore, Barnhill Contracting Company was very excited to integrate Egnyte and Procore so its office and project teams had a single source of truth for their documents.

Challenge: Finding a Better Way to Securely Collaborate

Seven years ago, Barnhill Contracting Company undertook a strategic project to bring control and consistency to their file systems. The inception of this initiative began with Jason Deans, director of virtual construction. "Back then, all our file storage was on a shared drive internally and on premises,” Deans said. “You couldn't find anything. Documents were scattered in different locations. It took an hour for executive leadership to locate the right folder.”

In addition, project teams had an aversion to File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Instead, they preferred to transfer data through traditional means by burning it onto a CD and delivering the information to the intended parties. Deans needed a better way for teams to collaborate on large files internally and with outside parties such as architects and subcontractors. He also needed a way for collaborators to securely access files via mobile devices without requiring the use of email applications.

“I played around with Box, Dropbox, and a few other services looking for viable solutions. Then, working with Arthur Reed, our network administrator, we determined that Egnyte had the best feature set,” Deans said.

Barnhill initially rolled out Egnyte within its VDC (Virtual Design and Construction) department. But within a few months, executives wanted their own Egnyte accounts. Before long, the entire building division migrated their files onto Egnyte. "Once we migrated the building division files, over half of our company used Egnyte,” Reed said.

At that time, the company used a project management tool that didn’t integrate with Egnyte and wasn’t meeting all its needs, including support for project financials. Barnhill replaced that project management tool with Procore, but project-specific data still resided in two different locations that did not sync between Egnyte and Procore. It was confusing because so many documents doubled up, said Newall Rand, operations technology manager.

“Someone would save a file in Procore, and another person on the same project would save the same document to Egnyte,” Rand said. “A project team member could not find the right information because they did not know what the other team members were doing.”

According to Rand, Barnhill used another project management tool for punch lists, drawings, and submittals. “Basically, we still had two separate systems that were not talking to each other well,” he said.

Solution: Procore and Egnyte Keep Everyone in Sync

The Procore-Egnyte integration became a topic of discussion during the company's folder structure reorganization. Keeping in line with the initiative to rely on a single source of truth, project files needed to be accessible to stakeholders who did not have access to Procore. That meant they needed a solution to sync Procore files with files stored outside of Procore.

"We were trying to get everything down to where there's one source of truth for a project,” Reed said. “From Day One all the way through closeout, whether they have access to Procore or not, everyone needs to be working from the same latest version of files. The Egnyte and Procore integration makes that happen."

Once the enhanced Procore connector went live, Egnyte documents synced in real-time, allowing Barnhill's project teams to work in the Procore environment and access the documents from a single source of truth in Egnyte. That meant users could leverage a common folder structure without jumping between Procore and Egnyte.

"When an executive in the office needs to find a project document, they can go to the designated drive in Windows Explorer to find the same information as a project manager working in the Procore Environment," Deans said. "If an architect does not want to have access to the Procore project files, we can easily collaborate and share on those same files in Egnyte."

Results: Eliminate Duplication with the Easy-to-Use Connector

Barnhill's IT department trusts Egnyte’s enhanced Procore connector to sync files in both places. They are confident the data will be available to users whether they are accessing it through Egnyte or the Procore environment.

“When team members sign into their desktop app, they have access to their data right there,” Reed said. “They don’t have to spend time downloading, editing, and re-uploading. We have a very small IT team and don’t have a lot of time to train, and our building division folks don’t have much time to sit down and listen. With Egnyte, they just sign into their app and start working. It's intuitive."

A Win-Win Situation with Zero Complaints

Before creating a single source of truth for project file collaboration and storage, employees got frustrated. The VDC department could not collaborate on large files internally or externally. Employees could not find what they needed, and, at times, executive leadership would spend an hour looking for a project folder. In some cases, IT staff were pulled in just to find files.

On-premises versioning was cumbersome and not user intuitive. With Egnyte, they can restore the previous version in a few clicks, which Reed said makes him feel more secure.

Today, the IT team spends less time dealing with on-premises challenges. Auditing was a disaster before Egnyte. Finding out which user dragged a folder or where the user dragged the information was complicated and time-consuming. With Egnyte, Barnhill's IT crew pulls up a quick audit report to diagnose the issue. “The audit report will tell you who's accessing what, and how often,” said Reed. “With Egnyte's security features, we can be more proactive than reactive."

As Barnhill continues its journey toward creating a single source of truth, they are looking to migrate away from on-premises file storage. Reed says, “Egnyte's been super easy to use to the point where we just sign our guys in. They have a shared drive, so it's very simple for them to access what they need when they need it."