McLarens 1st in shipping industry to unveil strategic move to Microsoft Azure Disaster Recovery with

McLarens Group Head of ICT Umeshi de Fonseka and H ONE CEO Samath Fernando with the Azure Project Team

From the Chairman to the Jt. Managing Directors, the senior management of McLarens Group – avid car racing enthusiasts – know a thing or two about speed and crossing the finish line first. 

Known for its success in shipping and logistics, McLarens Group recently added to its track record as the first in Sri Lanka’s shipping industry to unveil a strategic move to cloud-based Microsoft Azure for their complete disaster recovery needs with leading enterprise IT solutions advisor, H ONE. The best-in-class solution helps the Group avoid the hassles and hidden costs of tape backup and instead enables them to rely on Microsoft’s global network of cloud data centres to better protect critical business applications, speed recovery and restoration of services in the event of a site outage, and reduce data protection costs. 

McLaren’s Group, which boasts a diversified holdings portfolio including hotels and leisure, property development and automotive products, is bullish about growth and opportunities, seeing the move to Azure as the next logical step forward for the business as they start rolling out several new joint ventures with leading enterprises. Commenting about the move, Joint Managing Director Shehara Jayawardana stated, “We like to be trailblazers in everything we do. Our support services are key and moving to Microsoft Azure is one step we have taken to ensure that the business is ready and can realise its true potential.” 

With potential comes risk, Group Head of ICT and Digital Business Umeshi De Fonseka explains, “We deal with demanding clients and time sensitive operations. If a system goes offline, we lose out on potential business opportunities. Every second counts. Soon after we started our move to Azure we learned that the competitor solution faced a four-hour outage. We can’t afford that kind of downtime.” he emphasized. “Data security is another concern of ours.”

“Most of the Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Cloud with its world-class security protocols in place. We are confident in them.”

Having evaluated on-premises options, the Group concluded that personnel, insurance, media and capex costs not only inflated maintenance operations, but also failed to afford the company the flexibility and scalability it required to divest or grow in line with the business. “With Azure, Microsoft does the heavy lifting for us. We can focus on our core business and on developing a team of specialists who are laser-focused on our business-critical needs instead of on maintenance, all while keeping our team lean.”

To implement the Azure solution, McLarens Group turned to leading Microsoft Cloud Partner for South-East Asia New Markets, and Microsoft Partner of the Year for Sri Lanka – H ONE. “H ONE – who we have worked with since 2014 - were on-site, they took the time to understand what the business was going through, provided us with a practical and affordable solution, and reinforced our teams with training and support so they were ready to manage Azure with confidence. Their team is the best technically sound team in Sri Lanka and we were very happy with them,” said De Fonseka.

Commenting on the cloud journey, H ONE CEO Samath Fernando said, “We are honoured to work with McLarens Group and look forward to doing so as they grow and scale. The Group began with their move of over 600 users to Microsoft Office 365 in 2016 which I’m proud to say was executed in record time. As the first in the shipping industry to invest in Microsoft Azure Disaster Recovery, the Group is gearing up for growth by getting their foundation right. Too many organizations make the mistake of skipping over a comprehensive DR strategy in favour of a piecemeal approach due to budgetary constraints. Having built our name on our strong, regionally – recognised cloud practice, H ONE can help make cloud DR feasible for businesses of all sizes. 

H ONE is a Microsoft Tier One Partner and #1 – ranked Microsoft Large Account Reseller serving the largest number of Enterprise Agreement customers in Sri Lanka. With over 40,000 cloud seats deployed across Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Thailand, H ONE is synonymous in the industry with proven cloud solutions expertise and customer success across the banking, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, education and leisure sectors. Its mature cloud practice is built on a foundation of highly qualified technical resources, proven best practices, strong customer references and a commitment to showing return on investment.