Case Study: San Jose Water
“When we engage with a managed service provider, we need experts. We replaced another vendor with Cascadeo, and in addition to bringing technical skills, they also communicate back to us effectively. We continue to gain knowledge just by working with them.”
—Stan Blaauw, DevOps Manager, San Jose Water
San Jose Water’s Cloud Initiative
Founded in the 1800s, San Jose Water has evolved to be one of the most technically sophisticated urban water systems in the US, serving 230,00 customers in the greater San Jose, California metropolitan area.
To help execute on AWS migration and management in order to deliver on an all-cloud initiative, San Jose Water chose managed services from Cascadeo.
“We have a wide range of projects we’re working on, both on the cloud infrastructure side and in terms of the service we provide to the community,” said Stan Blaauw, DevOps Manager at San Jose Water. “We use AWS for both customer-facing and internal projects.”
Benefits to Clients and Personnel
Any San Jose Water customer, for example, can look up their address to understand the fluoride concentration in their water supply. This uses an API call to AWS and is displayed on the public sjwater.com website.
In terms of employee-facing projects, in addition to enterprise asset management software, Blaauw and his team are working to deploy a GIS application that will be available to employees both in the field and in the office. The goal is a unified experience across devices and locations.
Access to information about water mains, service lines, fire hydrants—information that can be as granular as the size of a pipe, or the year it was installed—is all critical data for San Jose Water to keep the water supply clean, compliant, and reliable. For employees who interact with this data, it increases the ability to provide exceptional customer service and better collaborate with one another, whether that is for new projects, repairs, or advanced troubleshooting.
“We Need Experts.”
“What we have appreciated about Cascadeo is the guidance offered in the best ways to use AWS for our specific use cases,” said Blaauw. “When we engage with a managed service provider, we need experts. We replaced another vendor with Cascadeo, and in addition to bringing technical skills, they also communicate back to us effectively. We continue to gain knowledge just by working with them.”
As part of its commitment to drive innovation and become a cloud first organization, Blaauw said that it’s not just about a particular technology, but also cultural change. “As the company brings on new applications, they might ask me to provision a virtual machine, and I have to ask: is this something we could do instead with AWS?”
Transforming Applications in AWS
At the core of Cascadeo’s managed services practice is refactoring applications for the public cloud, and surfacing innovation opportunities within the AWS ecosystem.
With over 100 AWS certifications, engineers have the ability to deploy AWS services which help customers move away from legacy data centers, colocation, IaaS, private clouds or any infrastructure that is incumbent on the client to maintain. When freed up from server or VM administration, teams have more time to focus on answering the questions that are critical to their business. In addition, Cascadeo offers professional services, so IT departments are never left without the people resources to solve problems impacting the organization and their customers.
“Ultimately, while Cascadeo is a vendor to San Jose Water, they feel much more like a member of our team,” Blaauw said.
About San Jose Water
San Jose Water is an investor-owned public utility serving the greater San Jose metropolitan area with high quality water with an emphasis on exceptional customer service. By sharing these services with others, we benefit the local community, lower the cost of water operations, and improve opportunities.
About Cascadeo
Cascadeo is the cloud managed services and professional services partner that helps your organization meet internal goals like employee productivity and external goals like customer experience.
