Every so often, a new technology threatens to disrupt existing business models. Companies either adapt or die. Microsoft Azure was one of those disruptive technologies, and in 2017, iPulse Systems, a biometric access specialist headquartered in Randburg, South Africa, decided to pivot its entire range to Microsoft’s rapidly evolving new cloud platform.
The vision was to fully integrate IQSuite, their market-leading access control system, with Azure. Gary Chalmers – CEO, former IT trainer and serial entrepreneur – and his team were keen to ensure that this reorientation got off to a good start, so they arranged a meeting with a representative from their local Microsoft distributor.
We needed a partner who really understood our business model and what we were trying to achieve, but I just didn’t feel we got that from our existing relationship.
The CEO continues with “We were really pushing the envelope at the time, wanting to run Kubernetes on Azure – all ground-breaking stuff. We were still quite small at the time and felt like we were just a drop in the ocean.”
Gary and his team at iPulse went ahead and launched IQSuite.cloud anyway, taking the direct-to-market route, but it was a struggle, with expense tracking a particular nightmare. “It got so bad that I even considered AWS”, says Gary, with a chuckle.
Soon afterwards, Gary was introduced to Crayon. Here, he discovered a cloud-first business partner that totally “got” Azure, offering tools that simplified the whole process, particularly in relation to billing and provisioning accounts. Instead of 17,000-line spreadsheets every month, Crayon’s Cloud-iQ product showed exactly where iPulse was spending its Azure budget.
“Crayon’s portfolio of tools enabled us to do more with less”, says Gary. “I felt supported by a like-minded organization with its core business being Internet hosting, rather than selling hardware. It was a revelation and completely revolutionized what we could achieve at iPulse.”
With Crayon, I can call anyone on their team any time, from CEO to the technical guys, to get the answers I need. With Tracy, we’re blessed with a hard-working Partner Development Manager, and I regularly speak to Crayon’s leadership at local events. Importantly, I feel connected to a worldwide company with a local footprint that has been an integral part of our explosive growth over the past two years. Crayon is the partner that will enable us to scale to match our global ambitions.
This post was originally published on Crayon.
