Case Study: Woodard & Curran achieves $350,000 annual savings and instant cross‑office collaboration with Microsoft Azure

Engineering firm saves $350,000 a year with hybrid cloud storage

Woodard & Curran, a 900‑employee US environmental engineering firm with 27 offices, was hamstrung by isolated on‑premises NetApp NAS systems, SnapMirror replication over MPLS, and Riverbed WAN accelerators. Large files took forever to open across the WAN, making multi‑office collaboration slow and forcing staff travel or duplicated work — a major barrier to the company’s goal of assembling project teams regardless of location.

The firm deployed Panzura Hybrid Cloud Controllers in each office connected to Microsoft Azure, creating a “hot edge, cold core” single global file store with encryption and deduplication. The change delivered LAN‑speed access for all users, eliminated MPLS/WAN appliances and separate backup/DR systems, and enabled Office 365 and other Azure workloads. Results included roughly $350,000 in annual savings, doubled Internet speed at half the cost, a 7% reduction in travel spend, faster acquisition integrations, improved security and near‑unlimited scalable storage.

Woodard & Curran

Kenneth Danila

Director of Information Systems