M&S Engineering Eliminates File Data Silos to Accelerate Complex Projects

How a Texas Engineering Firm Eliminated Data Silos, Cut Storage 40%, and Accelerated Project Delivery with Panzura CloudFS's Hybrid Cloud Architecture

"We've been able to get our deliverables to our clients quicker, using less man hours. If that's not a statement for ROI, I don't know what is."
—Clay Pilkilton, Director of IT Security and Infrastructure

Impact Snapshot

• 40% storage reduction through CloudFS global deduplication and compression delivering immediate cost savings and simplified infrastructure management
• Real-time collaboration across distributed offices with a global namespace, eliminating file version conflicts and enabling engineers to work as if co-located
• 60-second RPO with immutable file system architecture, providing ransomware resilience without traditional backup infrastructure or operational overhead.
• Accelerated project delivery with reduced man-hours per deliverable, directly improving positioning in a highly competitive market and industry
• Zero file collisions, enabling engineers to simultaneously co-author complex CAD models and Power Line Systems (PLS) designs without data overwrites

The Challenge: When Infrastructure Becomes the Bottleneck

As a premier electrical distribution and transmission engineering firm serving clients across Texas, M&S Engineering had built a competitive advantage through its distributed workforce model. Licensed engineers in electrical, civil, structural, and MEP disciplines collaborated across multiple offices to deliver quality services. However, the very infrastructure meant to enable this collaboration had become its greatest impediment.

M&S's engineering teams relied on Power Line Systems (PLS)—specialized software for modeling complex electrical transmission systems. These models generated data sets with substantial file sizes that grew continuously throughout project lifecycles. The IT team faced a compounding dilemma.

Productivity hemorrhaging: Engineers wasted hours manually copying multi-gigabyte files between offices, then spending additional time verifying versions matched. When files didn't merge properly, teams faced costly rework on critical transmission system designs.

Collaboration gridlock: Without global file locking, distributed teams couldn't simultaneously work on the same PLS models. An engineer in one office might unknowingly overwrite changes made by a colleague in another location, creating dangerous errors in electrical system specifications.

Infrastructure decay: Aging NAS arrays at each office created a patchwork of data silos. Each location maintained its own "version of truth," making it nearly impossible to ensure teams worked from current project data.

Security exposure: Disparate storage systems lacked modern ransomware defenses. A single successful attack could encrypt critical engineering deliverables across multiple projects, with no guaranteed recovery path.

Scalability ceiling: As M&S experienced double-digit growth, the existing architecture couldn't scale. Adding new offices meant deploying additional NAS infrastructure and multiplying the file synchronization complexity.

Technical Requirements

• Unify data access across all offices through a single authoritative data source
• Enable real-time collaboration on large, complex PLS engineering files with minimal latency
• Eliminate manual synchronization and the version control chaos it created
• Provide ransomware resilience with rapid recovery capabilities
• Reduce infrastructure complexity without sacrificing performance
• Support aggressive business growth with seamless scalability

Traditional file sync and share solutions couldn't meet these demands. Cloud-only approaches introduced unacceptable latency for multi-gigabyte engineering files. Replicating the existing NAS infrastructure would simply multiply the problems. M&S needed a fundamentally different architectural approach.

The Solution: Hybrid Cloud File Platform with Global Intelligence

M&S Engineering implemented Panzura CloudFS—a hybrid cloud file platform underpinned by industry's fastest RPO according to Frost & Sullivan. Unlike traditional NAS or basic cloud sync tools, CloudFS creates a single authoritative data source in object storage while delivering local-feeling performance through intelligent edge caching. The architectural transformation was clear.

Unified Namespace: CloudFS consolidates M&S's distributed file data into a single object store, eliminating data silos entirely. Every office accesses the same global namespace—there's no "Houston version" or "Dallas version." All engineers see the same files with immediate consistency.

Intelligent Edge Infrastructure: CloudFS edge nodes at each M&S office provide high-performance local caching. When an engineer opens a large PLS file, it's cached locally for instant access. When they save changes, only the modified data blocks are sent to the central object store and metadata is immediately distributed to all other locations. This architecture delivers LAN-like performance with global synchronization measured in seconds, not hours.

Patented Global Deduplication: Unlike solutions that deduplicate only within a single site, CloudFS performs inline global deduplication across all M&S locations. When similar PLS models exist in multiple projects, redundant data blocks are stored only once, reducing M&S's storage footprint by 40% instantly.

Global File and Byte-Range Locking: CloudFS's sophisticated locking mechanisms solve the collaboration gridlock. When an engineer opens a file, global file locking prevents others from creating conflicting changes. For applications supporting byte-range locking—including Microsoft Excel and complex CAD tools—multiple engineers can simultaneously edit different sections of the same file without collisions.

Immutable Data Architecture: Every file change generates an immutable snapshot in object storage at 60-second intervals. These snapshots provide a 60-second RPO without requiring traditional backup jobs, backup windows, or backup infrastructure. If ransomware strikes, M&S can restore to any point in time within the past minute, rendering encryption attacks futile.

FIPS 140-3 Certified Security: All M&S file data is protected with military-grade encryption both at rest and in transit. CloudFS is the only hybrid cloud file storage solution to achieve FIPS 140-3 certification, ensuring that sensitive transmission system designs meet the highest security standards.

M&S deployed CloudFS edge nodes at each office and configured object storage with their preferred cloud provider. The implementation included VPN-less remote access, and migration of existing file data from disparate NAS systems into the unified CloudFS environment. Moreover, the team was able to integrate with existing Active Directory for seamless authentication, and configuration of snapshot retention policies aligned with project lifecycles and compliance requirements.