Progressive Genetics bring new life into their state-of-the-art office space

BACKGROUND

Established in 1995, Co. Meath based Progressive Genetics is the largest farmer owned cattle breeding Co-operative in the Republic of Ireland, with a workforce of over 300 people, and 3,000 Irish farmer shareholders.

Progressive Genetics is involved in a range of farmer related businesses and services, and is keenly committed to using technology, research and best practice to bring the best value to the products and services they provide.

Progressive Genetics is a trusted and long-serving customer of INNOVATE, so when a new office move presented itself, we collectively saw the opportunity for them to embrace the latest technologies available to help serve their customers better.

Speaking to Therese Coogan, she said “When the time came for us to expand into a new office, INNOVATE knew we needed to upgrade our core infrastructure and security to support our growing business.”

SOLUTION

INNOVATE performed a detailed site inspection and review in order to produce a tailored recommendation to suit Progressive Genetics’ business requirements. The recommendation provided was to deliver a resilient and scalable network. INNOVATE engaged with the client during the planning stages of the office build and supported them in terms of connectivity options and network design. That ensured we provided infrastructure to deliver an optimised, cloud managed solution. The new office space required staff and visitors to access wireless services securely, so a number of Cisco Meraki Wireless access points were installed to make this possible. 

As a cloud first service provider, INNOVATE helped Progressive Genetics to understand the value this technology could bring in the future. By embracing cloud ready architecture, the team at Progressive Genetics could feel confident they were future proofed and that the move to cloud will, in time, be seamless.

The upgrade was important to enable employees who work remotely to access business-critical applications, ensuring business continuity was kept to the forefront of the design. Microsoft Windows 2019 server with replication services was installed to host core line of business applications. ensuring maximum uptime for critical services. The network solution included Cisco managed switching and a cloud managed Cisco Meraki firewall, ensuring that all devices can be managed remotely. This means that as the Managed Services partner to Progressive Genetics we have a high level of visibility of the network, we can proactively monitor all devices, changes can be applied quickly, all through a single pane of glass. This proactive support allows the team at Progressive Genetics to focus on what they do, and better support their customers.

As with many organisations, Progressive Genetics take their security seriously and wanted to ensure that security was layered into all elements of their new environment. The INNOVATE security stack included:

• Barracuda Advanced Threat Protection for email security
• Cisco Umbrella and Cisco Duo for end user security, ensuring remote users have additional security layers when working from home and accessing corporate data
• All user devices were replaced with Windows 10 to ensure there was a secure and up to date user platform across the business.

Newly available technologies such as Cisco Duo were implemented by INNOVATE to create an efficient, productive workflow and reduce any potential disruptions or downtime to Progressive Genetics and their workforce. Cisco Duo applies MFA to your VPNs and requires a second source of validation before granting access.

Therese said “We like many other organisations are acutely aware of the security threats that we are facing and wanted to be sure that we were investing to protect our users and our data. As a trusted advisor, we knew INNOVATE could deliver a high-performing and secure solution.”

RESULT

“We have been working with INNOVATE as our trusted IT advisor for the past 4 years. Their technical expertise and commitment to finding the best solution for our specific business needs has been invaluable in the refreshing of Progressive Genetics’ infrastructure.” said Therese.

“When we were moving into our new premises, we grasped the opportunity to refresh our IT estate, allowing our staff increased flexibility while being confident our security was second to none. We knew that INNOVATE would provide a tailored recommendation that would improve our business’ performance and allow us to improve services for our customers.

INNOVATE delivered a cloud ready solution, upgrading our core infrastructure whilst allowing us to keep working without disruption. We now have the capacity to access and manage devices remotely and securely”.

“The standard of service provided to us throughout the years has been excellent, and we are very happy to have had INNOVATE as our IT provider whilst our business was expanding.” Said Therese

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