Palletline

Palletline
palletline logo

We interviewed Alex Webb, Palletline’s Lead Infrastructure Specialist to find out more about working with Netmetix and moving to the cloud.

Tell us about yourself.

Palletline is the UK’s first premium palletised freight distribution company. We operate across the UK and Europe. We have been in business for nearly 30 years and have revolutionised the way pallets are transported.

Our forward-thinking and innovation means that we try to embrace new technologies and improve our business models to increase the speed and efficiency of our services, whilst helping to reduce costs for our customers.

As the Lead Infrastructure Specialist at Palletline, I am responsible for the internal infrastructure for Palletline owned hubs, along with any depots that we own. I also look after the infrastructure of our bespoke applications that we use internally and externally.

Alex Webb, Palletline

What IT challenge did you face?

We used to host our bespoke application on hardware in a datacentre. We found that we were constrained by this hardware which was purchased three years ago. As Palletline grew the bespoke application needed to grow as well, but unfortunately the old hardware had reached its limit. When looking at the cost of a server refresh, and the ongoing datacentre costs, we decided to explorer Azure as an alternative which could potentially give us more for our money.

What solution did Netmetix offer?

Palletline hadn’t explored Azure in much detail before, but we were aware of the benefits it could offer us. We reached out to Netmetix to see what additional functionality Azure could offer us, other than what we already knew about. We had a scoping session with Greig, Netmetix’s Technical Director, to see what we already had, what we wanted to do and the best options available to us.

After the scoping session, Greig identified that it would be best to migrate the virtual machines (currently hosted at the hosting centre) to Azure. Greig and the team set up all the VNets and resources ready for go-live. Over the go-live/ migration weekend Greig and the teams migrated the machines and by the afternoon the application was running on Azure.

How has this solution impacted your day-to-day business?

Migrating the bespoke application to Azure was just the start for Palletline. Since the system has been moved to the cloud, we’ve updated the machine to newer OS’s and SQL platforms. With the update to the Virtual Machines, we have started to explorer other technologies Azure has to offer which could make Palletline cutting edge.

We have also started to make use of Azure’s other functionality internally including moving our phone system to Azure to ensure that there is as little downtime as possible.

Would you recommend Netmetix to other clients and if so, why?

100%! The team at Netmetix made moving over to Azure a breeze. As we are on a CSP billing it makes it really easy for us to add in new resources when needed. We have also called upon the support team for other issues that we had never seen before with VM performance, and they took it in their stride and gave us a prompt response. No challenge is too big for the team!

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