Case Study: Ideal Electrical

Scaling a 90-year-old business with a modern cloud foundation

How Ideal Electrical modernised its infrastructure with TEAM Cloud

After 90 years in business, Ideal Electrical knows how to evolve. But as its private cloud environment aged, maintaining it was becoming increasingly costly and complex for its lean IT team.

The move to TEAM Cloud has delivered just that, while creating significant savings in IT Opex over three years.

The business has also strengthened its disaster recovery, improved application performance across its nationwide branch network and moved to a more predictable infrastructure cost model — all while reducing the amount of reactive infrastructure work required internally.

For Ideal Electrical, modernisation wasn't about adding more technology. It was about creating a simpler, more resilient foundation for the next stage of the business.

A heritage business with a very modern challenge

Ideal Electrical has grown into one of New Zealand's leading electrical wholesalers, with branches nationwide supplying electricians, contractors and commercial businesses.

For a business operating at this scale, technology availability is closely tied to customer service. When systems slow down or infrastructure fails, the impact can quickly reach branches, internal teams and customers.

After several years running on private cloud infrastructure, Ideal Electrical was reaching the limits of its existing model.

The cost and complexity of maintaining the environment were becoming difficult for a lean IT team, while disaster recovery and failover capabilities needed to be stronger. At the same time, the business needed infrastructure that could respond to changing demand without continually paying for peak capacity.

The goal was straightforward: improve the infrastructure supporting the business without creating more work for the people managing it.

Choosing the right combination of cloud and expertise

Ideal Electrical considered a range of hyperscalers and managed service providers before selecting TEAM Cloud Infrastructure.

TEAM Cloud provided the performance and pricing model the business was looking for, particularly for Oracle and legacy POS workloads where consistent, low-latency performance was important.

TEAM IM provided the managed service around that infrastructure, giving Ideal Electrical access to monitoring, support and local expertise without needing to build additional capability internally.

The New Zealand-based relationship was also important. Ideal Electrical valued having a team that understood the local operating environment and compliance requirements, and could provide direct local support.

A migration designed to minimise disruption

Moving critical systems across a nationwide branch network required careful planning.

TEAM IM and TEAM Cloud began with detailed discovery and a proof of concept, working through Ideal Electrical's existing environment, workloads, critical systems and downtime requirements.

The migration was then completed in stages, with critical systems tested before cutover and switchover periods carefully managed. The result was a transition that was largely invisible to the people using the systems every day.

A stronger foundation for the business

The improvements became apparent beyond the migration itself.

Ideal Electrical gained significantly better visibility into its infrastructure and moved into a managed monitoring and support model. This has helped the team identify and manage issues more proactively, rather than relying as heavily on reactive infrastructure management.

Application performance has also improved, particularly for branch users who had previously experienced latency issues. Overall, systems are more stable and the infrastructure is better aligned with the business's requirements.

Excellent disaster recovery

One of the most significant changes has been Ideal Electrical's disaster recovery position. The business now has tested failover capability and backup processes it has confidence in. For Ideal Electrical, the improvement provides greater resilience and reduces the business risk associated with infrastructure failure.

A more predictable approach to infrastructure costs

The new environment has also changed how Ideal Electrical manages its infrastructure investment. Rather than continually provisioning for peak demand and carrying unused capacity during quieter periods, the business can adjust its infrastructure requirements as those needs change.

That has moved Ideal Electrical towards a more predictable monthly operating cost and improved its ability to plan and budget for IT. Combined with the expected savings over three years, the change represents a significant commercial benefit as well as a technology improvement.

Giving IT more time to focus on the business

For Ideal Electrical's lean IT team, one of the most valuable outcomes is what they no longer need to spend time doing.

With infrastructure management, monitoring and patching better supported through TEAM IM's managed service, the team can spend less time responding to infrastructure issues and more time on initiatives that move the business forward.

The managed service also provides greater consistency around patching and monitoring — an area that was difficult for the internal team to maintain at the same level on its own.

Modern infrastructure for whatever comes next

Ideal Electrical's experience shows that modernising infrastructure doesn't have to mean adding complexity.

By combining TEAM Cloud's underlying infrastructure with TEAM IM's managed service, the business has created a more resilient, visible and scalable environment — while giving its internal IT team more capacity to focus on the business itself.

The next phase is already taking shape, with Ideal Electrical exploring additional workloads, enhanced security services and integration capabilities within its TEAM Cloud environment.

After almost a century of adapting to change, Ideal Electrical now has an infrastructure foundation designed to support whatever comes next.