Egyptian Workspace Partners completes multiple projects for Budnick Converting

By DENNIS GRUBAUGH

Geoff Baltz, director of technology for Egyptian Workspace Partners, said the Belleville-based company had a clean slate from which to build the infrastructure needed to serve computers and more for the new Budnick Converting headquarters in Columbia, Ill.

Budnick Converting specializes in converting adhesive tapes, foams, foils, and other flexible materials. Its growth prompted construction of new headquarters and manufacturing space this past year.

“At the same time, they took the opportunity to look at IT infrastructure as a whole and decided it was a good time to do a system refresh as far as the data center and servers go,” Baltz said.

The IT work affected the entirety of the 100,000-square-foot building, which serves about 100 employees.

“The good thing was that Budnick saw the best way to do it was not to try to move old IT equipment and infrastructure. They had the foresight to build this out. It’s what we call a ‘greenfield,’ a blank slate,” Baltz said. “They saw the value of doing that. When the move happened, we had designed it from the ground up. It was one of the big reasons we didn’t have any problems.”

Working with Budnick’s IT director Brad Mutza, Baltz’s team designed a system that ensured the building was covered for network capability and security. Because of the planning, there were “zero hiccups” when all went live, Baltz said.

The key was in the planning.

“We worked with them to prepare before the move by bringing in new systems and setting them up to run parallel with their existing systems at their old building. We worked with them to migrate all their data before the move, so that shortly before the move they were running on all the new systems that would be in their new building,” Baltz said.

“Then, when it was time to do the move, we shut the systems down, did it all over a weekend, brought everything over to the new building, installed everything in the new data room, brought it back on line, and proceeded to spend time setting up and configuring the new networking.”

The switching including wi-fi service, internet access, firewalls, video cameras and routers.

Designing everything in advance made for a smooth transfer.

“We got it all done on a weekend so it was all up and running on Monday morning when everybody reported for work,” he said.

Last year, Egyptian Workspace Partners, which is based in Belleville, merged with Talis IT Partners, Baltz’s former company, providing a technology division that Egyptian had been seeking. Egyptian did all the furniture and interiors for the new Budnick building in Columbia. Kevin Baltz, who is president of Egyptian, is a first cousin of Geoff Baltz.

The wrap-up came at the end of September, about eight months after the first conversation between the two companies.

“We told them the story of we what we do, which is IT support and management. We’ve helped a lot of people move over the years. Between the technology team we have a combined 40 years of experience in the field. I think Brad really liked our approach. We weren’t making things up as we went, we were doing things based on best practices, and our experiences,” Baltz said.

This article appeared in the February print edition of the Illinois Business Journal. To find more stories go to the Current Edition link at ibjonline.com