On Center Software: Anytime, anywhere pre-construction management

About On Center Software

Headquartered near Houston, Texas, On Center Software provides software and training solutions for construction industry professionals in over 80 countries.

Industries: Technology
Location: United States

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By running its Oasis Platform on Google Cloud Platform, On Center Software is giving customers flexibility, performance, and high availability.

Google Cloud Platform Results

  • Gives customers more secure mobile access to construction software and data
  • Improves performance, availability, and scalability for Oasis Platform
  • Enhances visibility with easy-to-use monitoring, keeping customer service high
  • Reduces CapEx and OpEx, saving 80+ hours of staff time per week

Introducing new features 6x faster

Before a construction company can begin a project, it estimates materials, operations, and labor costs to make sure bids are competitive yet profitable. Accuracy is paramount, as underbidding can pose serious business risks. Since 1988, contractors have used solutions from On Center Software to increase accuracy, improve collaboration, limit risk, and track production.

Construction is a mobile business, and as cloud solutions became available, On Center saw an opportunity to empower its customers with the Oasis Platform—a scalable, cloud-based solution to manage the entire project lifecycle. By sharing information across systems, workflows, and project participants, contractors can access project information and collaborate anywhere, any time. A cloud-based solution also limits risk for customers because On Center hosts their data and continually delivers new features and fixes.

“Running Oasis Platform on Google Kubernetes Engine is beneficial to our business. We used to deploy twice a year, and now we update client-facing applications once a month and optimize our cloud infrastructure weekly. With Google Cloud Platform we can plan better, operate more efficiently, and give customers more value.”

Robert Irby, Director of Engineering, On Center Software

To be successful, On Center needed to host the Oasis Platform on a mature cloud ecosystem that would offer high performance and availability, as well as enhanced security. It chose Google Cloud Platform, quickly moving to a microservices architecture based on Google Kubernetes Engine to enable a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CICD) model.

With the ability to automatically scale and self-heal its infrastructure, On Center gives customers consistently high performance and availability, faster access to new functionality, and a seamless experience on mobile devices. Both CapEx and OpEx are reduced, helping the company keep prices competitive. And because Kubernetes Engine is backed by the Google security team of over 750 experts, customer data is more secure than it would be in their own data centers.

“Running Oasis Platform on Google Kubernetes Engine is beneficial to our business. We used to deploy twice a year, and now we update client-facing applications once a month and optimize our cloud infrastructure weekly. With Google Cloud Platform we can plan better, operate more efficiently, and give customers more value,” says Robert Irby, Director of Engineering at On Center Software.

“Google Cloud Platform gives us a huge competitive advantage by providing the tools we need to be proactive and make our services even better. Our delivery rate is faster, the quality of our products has improved, and we can deliver more reliable and scalable services.”

Robert Irby, Director of Engineering, On Center Software

Continuous delivery improves service

By using Kubernetes Engine to provision and manage cloud resources automatically, storing customer data on Google Cloud Storage, and using Google Cloud SQL to quickly deploy production and dev/test databases, On Center avoids managing any infrastructure related to the Oasis Platform. Instead, it can keep engineers focused on delivering new features in a DevOps environment. Developers and quality assurance staff can deploy and test whenever they want, without worrying about impacting operations.

“With Google Cloud Platform, we continuously integrate new functionality into our cloud-based solution. We’re also saving more than 80 hours a week in staff time, greatly expanding our capabilities as an engineering team,” says Robert.

Proactive monitoring for visibility

Because all Oasis Platform customers are on the latest software version in the cloud, it’s much easier for On Center to provide support. And with integrated logging, monitoring, and latency reporting via Google Stackdriver Logging, Stackdriver Monitoring, and Stackdriver Trace, On Center has unprecedented visibility into how the application is running. To optimize performance and costs, it exports logging and billing data into Google BigQuery for analysis.

“Google Cloud Platform gives us a huge competitive advantage by providing the tools to be proactive and make our services even better. Our delivery rate is faster, the quality of our products has improved, and we can deliver more reliable and scalable services,” says Robert.

“When our customers need to get a bid in on a project, they know our Oasis Platform will be available and fast—even at month end when thousands of other users are doing the same thing. That would be difficult for us to achieve at scale without Google Cloud Platform.”

Robert Irby, Director of Engineering, On Center Software

Communication and collaboration

To stay productive and connected, On Center makes extensive use of Google Workspace, including Gmail, Google Drive, Sites, Vault, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Google Meet, and Calendar.

“Google Workspace products are constantly evolving, and they have an extremely easy-to-use interface. For business communications and collaboration, Google Workspace is unmatched. There is nothing on the market as comprehensive,” says Zak Gunnells, IT Infrastructure Manager at On Center Software.

Faster, flexible project bidding

On Center now has the agility it needs to respond to changing customer needs and adapt quickly as the construction industry moves to the cloud. Its customers benefit from a more collaborative environment that enables them to work in the field, from home, or in the office. That means On Center customers can submit more bids faster and drive revenue.

“When our customers need to get a bid in on a project, they know our Oasis Platform will be available and fast—even at month end when thousands of other users are doing the same thing. That would be difficult for us to achieve at scale without Google Cloud Platform,” adds Robert.

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

Contact us

About On Center Software

Headquartered near Houston, Texas, On Center Software provides software and training solutions for construction industry professionals in over 80 countries.

Industries: Technology
Location: United States