Mead & Hunt Drives Rapid Growth with Panzura, Simplifying IT and Lowering Costs

Industry

Architecture, Engineering & Construction

Cloud

VDI Solution

Overview

For over a century, Mead & Hunt has been a multi-disciplined engineering and architectural firm using design applications including Autodesk Civil 3D and Revit. As the firm experienced rapid expansion and opened additional locations, including a new headquarters, the company faced a new challenge. Each office became a separate “island,” making it difficult for project teams in different locations to collaborate and share data. 

Mead & Hunt’s CIO, Andy Knauf, knew he needed a solution to enable real-time collaboration and increase productivity while simplifying the IT structure and reducing costs. The firm wanted a hybrid cloud file platform that could modernize their storage and collaboration, phasing out their legacy Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) systems. This would also enable fast and secure file access for their growing, distributed teams.

Challenges

Mead & Hunt's rapid expansion was expensive. Each new office required new equipment—servers, racks, and networking hardware—and the IT staff to install, configure, and manage it. This led to significant equipment costs and high operational burdens, especially for scaling project teams across more than 40 geographic sites. The company was determined to find an IT solution that would support its growth objectives and allow it to bid on projects anywhere in the world, hiring talent beyond a typical 50-mile radius. 

Mead & Hunt also wanted to give its employees the flexibility to work from anywhere while collaborating effectively in a common data environment. However, they were experiencing several engineering workflow bottlenecks. Users complained about file locking issues, sync delays, the risk of file corruption, and friction with cross-site collaboration. 

Security and compliance were critical concerns, especially with federal infrastructure work. The firm faced increased federal contract requirements for CMMC/FedRAMP, and its legacy vendors lacked the necessary strong security controls. They also needed a solution with high availability and fast failover for business continuity and disaster recovery after experiencing previous downtime incidents. In addition, there was a lack of real-time reporting, audit trails, and a centralized way to manage file access policies. 

Solution

Previously, establishing a new location meant delivering and installing a full rack of new hardware—servers, a SAN solution, and networking equipment. This would take a week or more and require an IT person from headquarters to be on-site for several days to complete the installation and then continue to tune and adjust the setup for a few weeks after that. 

With Panzura and Workspot, this process has been completely transformed. Panzura’s CloudFS provides an enterprise-grade hybrid cloud file system with a global namespace for distributed teams, offering file resilience, improved productivity, and disaster recovery.  

Multiple CloudFS nodes were deployed on-prem and in the cloud, with Azure AD and Okta providing identity and policy enforcement. Much simpler, the CloudFS configuration can be completed in days. The solution also resolves file locking and corruption problems that can occur when multiple remote users work on the same project file simultaneously. Panzura also helped the company meet its emerging CMMC compliance needs for government and federal projects. 

Workspot provides CAD engineers and designers with access to cloud workstations delivered from Azure. These power users can now access their cloud workstations from any location, and their device costs are much lower than before. The solution can be deployed in days and scaled easily across different cloud regions to meet business demand. Expensive servers are no longer needed, and physical workstation refreshes are a thing of the past. 

By consolidating its file storage and migrating project files, Mead & Hunt was able to largely retire its legacy NAS and SAN hardware. Having experienced recent weather events and natural disasters, the firm is also now better prepared for business continuity with CloudFS Instant Node failover protection, which seamlessly switches operations to a standby node, ensuring continuous data availability and minimal disruption. They have also enabled additional Workspot cloud workstations in alternate Azure regions, ready to be activated in the event of a major outage. 

Over the last 2 years we have increased headcount by 50% to 900 people and reduced IT spend by $250k with the Panzura and
Workspot joint solution. We are now operating as one collaborative team across our company, increasing productivity across all employees.

Results: Outcomes & Value Delivered

With Panzura and Workspot, Mead & Hunt has seen dramatic improvements in their IT operations and business outcomes. 

Users now experience better performance than they did with physical workstations, with improved response times after upgrades. The CloudFS solution ensures that multiple users can reliably work on the same files without conflict, as everyone is always working on the most recently updated versions. This has led to greater productivity and user confidence. 

The firm has seen significant reductions in storage costs because the hardware previously required for backups and disaster recovery is no longer necessary. They have also been able to retire almost their entire NAS/SAN footprint, freeing up IT resources for strategic initiatives. This has enabled the company to pursue new revenue opportunities anywhere in the world without needing a physical office. Less equipment in each remote office also lowers energy consumption and its associated costs. 

Mead & Hunt now has greater confidence in meeting compliance for federal projects, with controls that support CMMC and FedRAMP. They also benefit from the adoption of Panzura Data Services features like user behavior intelligence, ransomware detection, and threat control, along with the ability to perform bulk or targeted restores. This has also enabled them to significantly reduce metadata and streamline project management. The company also appreciates the robust permission enforcement across enterprise applications without manual policy mapping. 

High-availability and disaster recovery features are now part of standard workflows, offering seamless file access and collaboration across all 40+ of their geo-dispersed offices. Mead & Hunt most appreciates the resilience and global visibility offered by the solution, along with the ongoing flexibility to expand storage and users without a costly upgrade every year. 

Leveraging solutions from Panzura and Workspot, Mead & Hunt created an IT environment that scales efficiently as the firm grows. The company’s accelerated expansion continues in a secure and cost-efficient manner with improved collaboration and productivity across its distributed workforce. 

Conclusion

Using Panzura's CloudFS and Workspot's cloud workstations, Mead & Hunt tackled key challenges, including high infrastructure costs, collaboration bottlenecks, and strict security and compliance requirements. This successful integration simplified IT operations, boosted user productivity, and enhanced business resilience. As a result, the firm was able to streamline its current operations and confidently expand into new markets, pursuing high-value projects, all while cutting costs and strengthening its security. 

At a Glance

• Storage Reduction: 50% reduction in storage, freeing capacity, and improving performance 

• Eliminated Hardware Refreshes: Phased out legacy NAS/SAN at more than 30 sites 

• Increased Employee Productivity: High cache-hit rates, fast file access for distributed teams to work from anywhere 

• Met Compliance Requirements: CMMC/FedRAMP-ready, central IAM 

• Better Risk Mitigation: 2-minute ransomware detection with reliable DR