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About Keating Construction

Keating Construction is a Marine, Civil Engineering, and Building firm with offices across Ireland and the United Kingdom. Established in 1987, the firm has developed a reputation as a leading multidisciplinary contractor in engineering. Recently, Keating Construction has expanded its portfolio to include projects in civil engineering, building, marine, and heritage, further highlighting its expertise in delivering complex assignments. The company is headquartered in Kilmihil, Co Clare, with offices in Dublin, Cork, and Winchester, Hampshire.

The Business Requirement 

The expansive nature of Keating Construction’s operations placed strain on their IT platform, which had been built up over time and was nearing the end of its product lifecycle. As the company grew internationally, there was an increased need for IT transformation. Rapid growth and multiple locations across fixed, short-term, and remote sites meant traditional IT approaches no longer provided the necessary agility and flexibility. This, combined with international expansion, demanded a new way of delivering IT services.

In 2018, Keating Construction was acquired by Dublin-based CBD Capital. Two key drivers for undertaking cloud migration included critical business events such as mergers or acquisitions and the need to create a more elastic work environment. Keating Construction responded by carrying out a risk register to identify all potential risks. Vincent Nolan, Keating Construction’s IT Transformation Co-Ordinator, identified several challenges.

According to Vincent, “Mission-critical infrastructure was coming close to breaking point. This, combined with outdated communication tools and disaster recovery setup, required a re-pouring of our foundations to create a successful platform for future growth.”

The Solution

Keating Construction’s risk register pointed to the need for a robust, reliable, secure, and scalable infrastructure to service both office and site locations. The firm’s vision was to develop an IT transformation programme following a “cloud-first” strategy. As Keating Construction’s trusted partner, Viatel Technology Group was tasked with working hand in hand with their team to deliver this vision. As Vincent Nolan pointed out, “The team at Keating Construction had the vision, Viatel Technology Group had the expertise.”

Viatel Technology Group has extensive experience in helping organisations transition from physical data centres to the Azure Cloud. With all cloud migration projects, they follow a simple yet robust process, including identifying key motivators and desired business outcomes, developing a cloud adoption strategy, analysing the organisation’s Azure readiness, and finally migrating the workloads and applications to Azure. Keating’s risk register identified key motivations, and Viatel Technology Group used this to establish critical next steps and detail a specific implementation plan. The team prioritised high-impact projects such as Office 365 and leveraging the Azure cloud for disaster recovery and backup, followed by enabling key line-of-business applications to run on Azure. Their Managed Cloud services now fully monitor, manage, and continue to enhance Keating Construction’s Cloud Platform.

The Result

Having begun its journey in the 1980s, Keating Construction has grown rapidly to become an internationally trading, multi-location operation. It is a testament to their ambition and willingness to improve that they firstly identified the need to carry out a risk register and, secondly, established a vision of a cloud-first IT strategy. The challenges unearthed in the register were a natural progression of this growth.

The decision to choose ‘Managed Cloud’, Viatel Technology Group’s cloud migration service, has made Keating Construction a more scalable, resilient, and secure organisation. Cloud-based backups ensure that Keating Construction’s business is always online, and the firm has incredible peace of mind knowing a disaster recovery plan is in place. Storage barriers have been completely removed, and provisioning infrastructure securely and quickly for new applications is a breeze. This project has also opened up new avenues for innovation within the cloud, with several key projects already in the pipeline. In 2019, Keating Construction now has the infrastructure in place to continue to scale, grow, and innovate for years to come.

When we decided on becoming ‘Cloud-First’, we knew we needed a partner with the expertise to take us on this journey. Viatel Technology Group is that partner, from the initial consultation to the planning, migration, and now management of our cloud estate. Their professionalism, service, and technical expertise mean that we can now look forward to the future.

Vincent Nolan, IT Transformation Coordinator, Keating Construction