Air Business is a market leader in global mail, fulfilment, distribution and subscription management. The company distributes 300 million items a year and has enjoyed growth of 700% under the ownership of An Post, the Irish Post Office. With help from Bytes, Air Business is now able to scale its business using the cloud, whilst also controlling costs.

Air Business had plans to grow and meet increasing customer demand. It was decided that migrating more IT services to the cloud would help achieve these goals, as the cloud is renowned for boosting scalability, control, security and overall modernisation. The company was already using Microsoft Azure cloud services for software development, but this was on an old subscription. It was aiming to move its core infrastructure and other services to Azure, whilst maintaining control and security of the environment. To prevent uncontrolled costs, it also wanted the ability to predict cloud spend easily. Air Business also needed a quick solution. It was working on a project with tight deadlines for a large new customer. Its on-premise server capacity couldn’t meet the demands of this customer, so the company had to decide whether to replace the hardware or bring forward its cloud migration plan.

Air Business needed help finding a new Azure subscription that could meet its growth plans and customer demand. The company knew that specialist assistance would also be required to architect this new subscription with core infrastructure. Bytes experts got to work finding a new Azure subscription. They moved Air Business from its old Enterprise Agreement (EA) to a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program (CSP). This enabled the company to add/remove seats monthly instead of annually. It also offered pay-as-you-go as opposed to an annual bill. This meant Air Business only paid for compute used and could save money at a time of increased growth – something rare to achieve. To design the right cloud environment, Bytes’ architects partnered with cloud consultancy EEC. Both teams worked together to ensure existing core infrastructure worked with the new subscription and subsequent migration. Air Business was impressed with the Bytes Cloud Platform Management (CPM) tool and decided to take it up. This award-winning service monitors cloud spend and can prove invaluable to businesses using the cloud. Bytes’ dedicated training specialists also ensured existing EA training vouchers didn’t go unused by Air Business.

Switching to a CSP for its Azure subscription gave Air Business the flexibility needed to grow without incurring huge costs. This CSP enabled the company to change seats monthly and pay only for what compute it used. With its new subscription firmly in place, Air Business could migrate more services to the cloud and deliver its project to a new customer on time. To control cloud costs, Air Business now use the Bytes Cloud Platform Management (CPM) tool to track and control spending, which has revolutionised the company's approach to cloud spend. Air Business was delighted with Bytes' knowledge and service, and it plans to work with Bytes again in the future for other IT solutions.