The Situation

MyHR is one of those quiet achiever Kiwi businesses which have gone on to emerge as a major success story, explains company CTO Peter Simmons. “Back in 2012, founders Jason and Sean had this idea then started a trial using a Content Management System as a proof of concept. Turns out it really worked, and they soon had 50 or 60 customers and built a system so it wouldn’t have to be manual.”

By ‘it really worked’, Simmons who came on board a decade ago in part to build the system, means sustained and substantial growth. “We’ve seen increases of 60 percent year on year. We also went from Auckland to Sydney, and now service nearly 1300 customers and look after the employment of 30,000 people.”

The MyHR difference, he notes, is the provision of HR expertise in addition to the Software as a Service platform. This has also resulted in ‘quite sticky’ clients, with a retention rate of up to 96 percent.

With rapid growth comes pressure on the internal IT team. It also causes pressure and exposes the limitations of existing technology. “Back in 2018 when we engaged with Lancom, it was for a lift and shift from our existing hosting provider to a better one. The limitations included the relative ‘unknown’ of that prior provider, and then also its structure. The closest data centre was in Singapore, while AWS had set up in Sydney. That meant any questions around data sovereignty just weren’t anything we had to worry about any longer.”

The solution

Simmons says Lancom came ‘into the mix’ helping with support and expertise on best practices. “When we realised we needed some additional support, we shoulder tapped a few of our existing MyHR customers who we knew provide the kind of expertise we were looking for,” he explains. “After a competitive process, we realised Lancom had the right skills and the right reach, with their presence in Australia and the local office. So it was a very thorough alignment.”

He describes working with Lancom as good, validating that choice. Moving from its previous provider into AWS threw up a number of challenges, which Lancom helped address with its collaborative and thorough approach to problem-solving. “On the technology side, we’re like a lot of Software as a Service businesses, with Linux Node JavaScript at the back end, and a web stack with an Application Programming Interface allowing integration of other applications and services. We also have a few other customer-facing apps, and some for staff.”

The ‘lift and shift’ to AWS, he explains, presented issues with some automation tools failing to work as planned. “One tool was supposed to replicate servers block by block; the team, with Lancom, tried getting around that but it didn’t work out. There are other ways, and we resorted to a bare metal build process. It took a bit to get the technical guys to give up on the plan, but we got there in the end.”

In addition, Simmons says Lancom’s managed services offering has proven invaluable to MyHR. “While this was a secondary driver, we access infrastructure support including automatic patching and backups, and other ‘business as usual’ support for our people and their computing needs. When we first started the relationship, this was particularly important as my IT team was just two people.”

The results

With Lancom’s support, MyHR made the shift into the AWS cloud smoothly and with no disruption to its thousands of customers on both sides of the Tasman. As time has gone by, Simmons says the company’s use of AWS and access to Lancom’s services and support has grown. “We’ve added a few more servers and expanded our use of AWS, and in addition to production environments have moved our User Acceptance Testing and demo environment over. And in terms of Lancom, we’re looking to take further advantage of its managed services offerings in addition to AWS expertise,” he explains.

Simmons adds that Lancom also provides strategic insights and recommendations for how and where AWS services can aid MyHR’s vision and direction. “We’ve got a ‘Phase 2’ modernisation plan which we’re looking to get to in due course. And Lancom provides a biannual review and highlights any issues, or any deviations from best practice along with suggesting improvements. They’re a partner keeping a close eye on our needs, helping us stay informed and on the same page.”

Infrastructure, he says, is something no software or services provider wants to concern themselves with. The move to AWS has proven invaluable, as everything has proven sound over the years with no interruption to business. "We are now able to scale with the needs of the business, in a secure and reliable way."