Lionakis is a multidisciplinary firm specializing in architecture, engineering, planning, and interiors. Founded in 1909 by Californiaâs first State Architect, the firm takes on large projects for private and public-sector clients.
To provide these clients with top-tier services, itâs critical for Lionakis to maintain a high level of workforce efficiency, business continuity, and content security. The firm achieves these goals with Egnyteâs cloud-based content management system. Egnyte enables Lionakis to meet faster project timelines, strengthening the firmâs reputation as a leader in its field.
Challenge: Cloud-Enable Content Management Workflows
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. âWeâll have a whole construction crew who canât move forward until they hear from us about a new directive stored on a file on the server. If we canât access those files, we could lose over a month of work,â explains Matthew Onken, IT Director at Lionakis. âThat could do real reputational damage.â
- Remote collaboration
Lionakisâs 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. âThe 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,â says Onken. âAn 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.â
- Onboarding acquired firms
Acquisitions are a core pillar of Lionakisâs growth strategy. Each time a company is acquired, it needs to be integrated into Lionakisâs file sharing ecosystemâa process that was slow and clunky with the Windows file server. âWe needed a better way to get acquired companiesâ files onto our network,â 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. âI 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,â Onken says. That ease of use made for an incredibly smooth implementation process. âI wish all new technologies were as easy to implement as Egnyte,â comments Kristina Williams, Director of Design Technology at Lionakis. âWe had excellent support, no headaches, and everything just worked great.â
Working with Egnyteâs Professional Services, the team started migrating data from their on-premises server into Egnyte. âWe migrated 16 terabytes of data in less than two weeks, with no missing data,â says Onken. From there, managing and collaborating on files of all sizes and types became exponentially easier. âOur designers loved that they could work on large Adobe Creative Suite files directly through the Egnyte drive,â Onken says. âItâs amazing how well the system performed, especially over long distances, considering the size of these files.â
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. âWhen 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,â explains Onken. âAnd architects at remote construction sites can load and access files instantlyâno VPN necessary.â Egnyteâs disaster recovery abilities extended beyond natural occurrences like floods or fires. As Onken says: âI was impressed with Egnyteâs data governance tools and ability to recover from ransomware attacks, which you donât often see on a typical local file server.â
Lionakis uses multiple technology products, and so it was critical that Egnyte work well with the rest of its stack. âOur team really appreciated Egnyteâs third-party integration capabilities, particularly with Microsoft Office,â says Onken. âAnd Revit worksharing for files outside of BIM 360 and Autodesk Construction Cloud on Egnyte has been seamless.â Egnyteâs Storage Sync product enabled the team to cloud-enable their workflows in Newforma, a critical software partner that often doesnât work well with cloud-hosted file management systems. âStorage 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,â says Onken. âPeople could store files in Egnyte and have them indexed in Newforma. Thatâs unique among cloud-based content management products Iâve seen.â
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. âEgnyte has unlocked tons of time savings that add up to condensed project timelines. That strengthens our competitive advantage,â says Onken. âIt used to take forever for people in satellite offices to open PDFs shared from our local server in Sacramento, but with Egnyte, itâs instantaneous. And we donât have to waste time connecting to VPNs just to do our work.â
Field architects and designers can now upload photos and other documents to the system in seconds without having to return to the officeâa new efficiency that benefits stakeholders in other areas such as design. âWe love the rapid photo upload feature from mobile phones directly to our mapped drives,â Williams says. âEgnyte has enabled us to move 100% of our design production files to the cloud.â
Onkenâs disaster recovery concerns have all but vanished in the wake of the teamâs switch to Egnyte. He now has confidence that neither disaster nor human error can significantly impede the teamâs ability to move projects forward. âIâm sleeping much easier now that I know work can continue even in the event of a flood or fire,â Onken says. âEven if someone accidentally deletes an important file, I can just use Egnyteâs search tool to find and restore it.â
Egnyteâs Storage Sync product, in addition to solving the Newforma issue, has facilitated the acquisitions that are so central to Lionakisâs growth. âWhen we acquire a company, we no longer have to fret about how weâre going to connect all the different networks,â explains Onken. âStorage 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.â
Looking ahead, Onken plans to keep educating the team on the myriad ways Egnyte can enhance their workflows. âEgnyte does so much,â Onken says. âThereâs always more to discover.â
Learn more about AEC industry data usage trends and how companies engage with data in the cloud with Egnyte's AEC Data Insights Report.
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