Qstage case study: Intercept
The key benefits to clients with Intercept hosting
“Hosting in the cloud means our customers avoid the hassle and cost of building, maintaining and eventually replacing on-premise systems.”
“Web-based functionality means it’s seamless to use, and manageable, for everyone.”
“Customers can scale their business easily as they grow, and even scale during the day to cater for peaks and troughs in demand.”
“Our customers can call on instant support from Azure and Microsoft experts if there’s ever an issue.”
“With ready-to-go templates, customers can start using Qnetex extremely rapidly.”
“Built-in back-ups mean that, in the unlikely event that a data centre goes down, any downtime will be minimal.”
‘‘Put simply, because we are provided with a total business solution rather than just the software, it’s one less thing that we need to worry about and we only have one point of contact for our entire ERP system’’
Mike Morgan, Managing Director, Savona
Hear from Jon Sessions, CSD’s Senior Analyst and Technical Project Manager, about how Qstage can transform operations for food companies
Why did CSD start to explore moving to the cloud?
Traditionally, CSD has offered customers ERP applications on dedicated, on-site servers. But as the world is moving to the cloud, we realised it was time to make the move and offer foodservice companies all the scalability, flexibility and cost efficiency that the transition makes possible.
We chose to work with Intercept, as they are experts in supporting software houses like CSD, so know what’s involved in hosting an ERP system on the cloud. That means our customers are receiving the very best hosting solutions that are ideal for their foodservice business.
How will CSD’s customers benefit?
Any on-premise system is state of the art when it is installed, but then quickly becomes out of date and even obsolete over time. Not only that, customers have to invest in IT specialists to maintain the servers so that business can continue at all times.
With Qstage, customers avoid the hassle and cost of installing and maintaining their own systems, and can be sure that their systems are completely up to date. Intercept regularly updates its service and features so everything is always state-of-the-art, enabling customers to capitalise on new features and opportunities.
Qstage also brings customers greater scalability than ever before. It’s difficult to add capacity to an on-premise server, but with cloud, you can resize your infrastructure literally at the click of a button. As well as this ‘vertical’ scalability, customers can also scale horizontally to meet changes in demand. For instance, if there is a particularly busy time in the day, they can spin up another server to cope with the peak for that short period of time. This can all happen invisibly, determined by the system itself, so customers don’t need to worry about monitoring systems or dedicating personnel to manage the server.
Service level alerts mean that if usage does start to drift beyond pre-agreed parameters, then we can check that a customer is happy to upscale before anything changes. At the end of the day, most customers are keen to go ahead, as upscaling means they are generating more business.
Should customers be worried about failing servers or downtime?
With Qstage, customers’ data is backed up continuously for seven days, so in the unlikely event that a server goes down, they can restore their data with minimum disruption.
Customers can even choose to have extra “standby” back up , with the option of a fully regional-resilient model, so if one server ever goes down, then a server in a different region maintains business as usual.
How speedy is implementation?
We implement Qstage with minimal impact, moving customers’ data onto the cloud seamlessly and transparently. We provide a URL that staff use to log in and use the system. There’s no need to wire in any hardware, configure servers or spend weeks training end users. We simply transfer data over and it’s then plug and play from day one.
Intercept also has a number of templates that our customers can use to deploy instantly, with the storage, servers and dedicated network all pre-configured. It becomes push-of-the-button deployment, creating a dedicated network for a customer in the cloud.
How secure will data be when moving to the cloud?
At CSD, security has always been paramount. Whether our customers’ data is kept on servers or in the cloud, we do everything we can to protect it. Qstage comes with role-based access, which means that access to particular data sets is strictly controlled. The systems are tightly locked down, and databases can only be accessed from within Microsoft Azure.
Customers also benefit from Microsoft Defender for Cloud, which is a service that constantly examines all the infrastructure for vulnerabilities and makes security recommendations. This all happens behind the scenes. So, in effect, customers’ data is just as safe – perhaps even more so – as if it was kept in an on-premises server.
For umbrella companies that oversee a number of independently trading companies, we also offer multi-tenant hosting. The data of each separate company will be shielded and kept separately from all the others, ensuring they each have their own cloud database, but within one single application. That means control for the umbrella company, and complete autonomy and security for the independent companies.
Find out how Qnetex can help your business move to the cloud quickly and easily to benefit from scalability, security and cost-efficiency, all with templates that are tailormade for the foodservice industry.
Find out how Qnetex helps you with everything from processing orders and managing stock to organising your warehouse and tracking deliveries – all in a single ERP