Cut infrastructure costs by 10% with right sizing
Migrated ERP workloads in just one week
Improved continuity with SQL Server high availability
Reduced finance processes from six hours to one
Strengthened security with VPC-based threat detection
Continautos achieved a 10% cost reduction, stronger security, and fivefold faster ERP performance after migrating to Google Cloud.
Continautos achieved a 10% cost reduction, stronger security, and fivefold faster ERP performance after migrating to Google Cloud.
Regaining control after a security incident
Not always because a company has a big name means it's expensive. Many IT leaders limit themselves because of the prejudice that working with large providers is costly or complicated, when often it's just a lack of knowledge.
Germán Sierra
IT Manager, Continautos
Continautos is the largest Chevrolet dealership in Colombia, with over 50 years of experience in the automotive market. In addition to new vehicles, the company manages after-sales services. The business group is growing with the Movelit brand, which also represents brands such as Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Zeekr, and Isuzu.
They were working with centralized systems hosted by an external provider, which limited visibility and access to configurations.
When a security incident hit, the impact exposed the risk of that black-box model: Operations slowed to manual workarounds, billing fell back to contingencies, and the team couldn't reach its own data. "The impact was big. It was almost a month without our information system, and even more complex was not having access to our data," says Germán Sierra, IT manager.
Costs were also rigid. Closed, preset packages left little room to right size or negotiate, and contingency options were thin. For their team, the mandate became clear: regain control, raise the security bar, and ensure continuity for ERP and adjacent workloads. They ran a head-to-head evaluation of worldwide providers, comparing financial models, security approaches, connectivity, and day-to-day administration.
Google Cloud stood out on two fronts. First, the operating model: Native monitoring, granular administration, and VPC-centric security put the IT team back in control. Second, the commercial fit: Flexible sizing and a financial model aligned with the company's reality. "The first characteristics that drove our section for Google were the management and financial models… they fully met our requirements and favored us financially," Sierra explains.
Partner Nuva guided the process from end to end: translating ERP vendor requirements into architecture, planning the migration, and enforcing security best practices so Continautos could move quickly without repeating past constraints. With the decision made, the company set Google Cloud as the new foundation for ERP and critical systems, prioritizing security, availability, and a path to future analytics and integrations.
Modernizing ERP to support daily operations
Once the decision was made, Continautos prioritized its most critical workload: their ERP. Together with Nuva, the company migrated production, development, and test environments onto Google Cloud. The architecture was built on Compute Engine, with enterprise databases running in high availability and supported by Persistent Disk, Cloud Storage, Cloud VPN, and Cloud Monitoring.
Although the IT team initially expected the migration to be a long and complex process, the results proved otherwise. "The whole migration process took approximately one week, when we had estimated it would be about 20 days. That difference was huge for us because it showed that with the right partner and the right platform, things could be done faster and with less disruption than what we were used to," says Sierra.
What's most beneficial with Google Cloud is being able to sit down and negotiate everything in one place, whether it's infrastructure, software, connectivity, or marketing. That synergy ends up optimizing not only processes, but also costs.
Germán Sierra
IT Manager, Continautos
Continautos also emphasized how the migration eliminated the need for manual contingency measures. In the past, billing and post-sales services had to be managed by hand whenever systems were unavailable, creating delays for customers and extra work for employees. Cloud Monitoring also allowed the team to right size workloads, which reduced infrastructure costs by 10%.
One of the most visible improvements was in finance. "Financial processes that could take more than five or six hours today run in one hour or less," Sierra explains. "For us that change isn't just technical; it directly impacts our finance team, who now close processes earlier and dedicate more time to analysis instead of waiting for systems to respond."
Security audits also reflect the change. Instead of relying only on antivirus and firewalls, Continautos now applies a VPC-based model with access controls, posture management, and threat detection. These practices not only give the IT team greater visibility, but also strengthen the company’s external evaluations.
Preparing for the future with data analytics
and intelligent automation
After stabilizing its core systems on Google Cloud, Continautos began focusing on data-driven transformation. The company is building a foundation that connects operational information across departments, aiming to turn data into a daily management tool rather than an after-the-fact report.
"The main objective now is all the data analytics part, and I'm sure that with Google we'll develop it through the BigQuery solution," affirms Sierra. "Not just seeing it as software or an analytical platform, but also as the correct construction of a data warehouse we're starting to build to align with a solid data model and analytics model."
Beyond analytics, Continautos is expanding its ecosystem through secure integrations with specialized providers. One of them focuses on automating workshop scheduling and improving visibility of each vehicle's repair process, now connected directly through the Google Cloud infrastructure.
The next step in its roadmap includes projects that apply artificial intelligence to customer and marketing experiences. Sierra explains how the company is exploring new tools and strategies in these areas together with Google.
"Some of these developments we've been discussing already have AI at their core," concludes Sierra. "We're looking at AI-based solutions for contact center and marketing. In marketing, we're carrying out a digital transformation process, aligning things internally first and then working with Google to build a strategy that I'm sure will be very successful."
As Colombia's largest Chevrolet dealership, with 50+ years in the market, Continautos offers new vehicles, post-sales services, and represents Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, and Isuzu.
Industry: Retail
Location: Colombia
Products: Google Cloud, BigQuery, Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Storage, Cloud VPN, Compute Engine, Persistent Disk
About Google Cloud partner - Nuva
Nuva is a Colombian Google Cloud partner that helps companies migrate to the cloud safely, improve security, and manage their infrastructure with better visibility and control.
