copy written for LucidLink
Award-winning architects and master planners redesign their
own workspace using LucidLink and superfast connectivity
The Company
Torti Gallas + Partners (TG+P) is one of the largest
planning and architectural firms in the United States and a leading proponent
of New Urbanism. Founded in 1953, the firm comprises award-winning architects
and master planners, urban designers, sustainability experts, construction
administrators, and community facilitators. It has offices across the United
States from Tampa and Washington D.C. to Philadelphia and Los Angeles, with an
international base in Istanbul, Turkey. Torti Gallas believes that design can
be a powerful force in the creation of environmentally, economically, and
socially sustainable communities.
Long term issues
Like many global firms in the Architectural, Engineering
& Construction industry, communication and collaboration are key to a
productive workflow.
Even before the pandemic, Torti Gallas + Partners was
looking for a solution to better manage, transfer and manipulate data across
all of its offices and to centralize it into one place.
“We had a lot of siloed NetApp storage systems that were
aging and we needed something accessible from both the office and remotely,”
explained Omer Mushahwar, CTO at Torti Gallas + Partners. “Speed is everything,
as without it the file access is extremely slow. We needed the same access
experience regardless of geographic location.”
TG+P had already begun research into switching out its
internal storage for a cloud-based system before COVID hit. Consequently, the
firm wasn’t caught off guard when the shelter-in-place orders were mandated.
“The biggest thing for us was getting people quick access to
the programs and the data they needed,” said Mushahwar. “We shifted all the
Autodesk workload on Bim360, and basically, everything else was done through
VPN – which for architecture files is a pain, because the files are so large.
If there are 100 people connected to a 100MB or 1Gig circuit they are going to
eat it up real fast. It slows access down a lot.”
Essential file access stalled
TG+P uses the full range of tools in the Autodesk AEC
Collection including Infraworks, Navisworks Manage, Civil 3D, AutoCAD, and
Revit, as well as Adobe and Office products and Sketchup. Its file sizes range
anywhere from a couple of Megabytes to multiple Gigabytes with some files in
excess of 100GB.
Before going remote the company had begun moving Revit
projects to Bim360, Autodesk’s cloud collaboration platform, but all other
workflows remained glued to the internal Virtual Private Network.
“Torti Gallas has built its success on the power of
collaboration,” says Mushahwar. “In practical terms today that means
collaboration at the desktop. Pre-pandemic we were concerned about getting
access to applications more quickly from workstations in the office so that we
can share, iterate and design the next steps in the process.
“It is now clear that the flexibility and agility that
hybrid workflows bring to creative collaboration and productivity – from
anywhere – will underpin our entire business approach going forward.”
Solution – turbocharged experience
Mushahwar took charge of researching and testing
technologies that could help TG+P’s architects and designers collaborate as
efficiently in the cloud as if their workstation was attached to a stack of
local discs.
“We looked at Panzura and Nasuni and all the big collaboration
platforms like Box and Dropbox and nothing fit all of our needs. A lot of them
didn’t always work with all of our file types. Linking for CAD files just
didn’t always work. With Panzura and Nasuni we would still have had to VPN into
the office which is sort of pointless. It didn’t solve our work-from-anywhere
initiative.
“We even explored doing a cloud dump in Azure or AWS with
NetApp files but nobody had a really good solution for remote. No one handled
that piece well.”
A particular roadblock was the ability for the team to work
seamlessly with the large files of modeling software Revit.
“That was a big sticking point with the vendors we looked
at. Our teams create dozens of versions of models as we iterate a project and
the systems we tested just couldn’t go back to the older versions quickly
enough or not at all.”
That was when they struck on LucidLink Filespaces for
enabling the team to quickly work together on design models directly out of the
cloud.
“The decision to go with LucidLink was a no-brainer,” says
Mushahwar. “Importantly, the end-user saw no difference in the application they
were accessing. The only change they experienced was a leap forward in speed.
Opening and saving files in Bim360, for example, was suddenly superfast.”
“It was rock solid in terms of reliability. Plus, we got
everything we needed at a price point we could jump on, especially during
COVID.”
TG+P went directly from proof of concept into production.
Results – Dramatically boosting responsiveness
Beginning July 2020, Torti Gallas replaced its entire
internal storage for an AWS S3-compatible object storage cloud solution from
Wasabi, with data migration managed by LucidLink. LucidLink’s
cloud-native NAS solution dramatically boosted responsiveness by enabling file
data of all sizes to be delivered efficiently and streamed on-demand.
“LucidLink is unique,” Mushahwar shares. “The app has
allowed us to mimic all our old file paths and now we have one unified storage
system. It worked well with all of our software and server-based systems from
day one due to the way it ties in and is read by the servers.”
LucidLink simplified and made access to project data across
all of TG+P’s offices in a network that can scale easily for secure remote
distributed workflows.
“We reorganized our seven network drives and data held in
more than a dozen different silos into one cloud-driven location that is now
easily accessible by all at any time of the day. All of our staff love it,
especially when working remotely. It has made file access and speed
exponentially better than VPN and has given our employees better access and
experience while working on files.”
He adds, “LucidLink lets us bring data into one place and
keeps everyone on the same level playing field.”
Reshaping the corporation
With hybrid office/work-from-home structures becoming the
global standard, LucidLink allows multiple authenticated users at Torti Gallas
to access data concurrently from one centralized location in the cloud, the
single source of truth.
“Going forward our virtual office in the cloud will make it
so much easier for Torti Gallas as an organization to flex our business in
response to client demand. We will continue remote working as a permanent facet
of our employee’s work-life balance. As a company, we can dedicate less space
to housing hardware on-premises, and in turn that helps us expand our presence
around the world both physically and virtually.”
He adds, “The updates the LucidLink team has added, even in
the short time since we signed up, have all improved the experience. All round,
this is a game-changing solution for our firm.”
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