从冠状病毒中造成了对行业的破坏，在建筑业现场大多可见，工人休假并延迟或取消。但是，工程和设计公司也发生了类似的中断，并且并非所有公司都能够处理被迫搬到虚拟办公室。

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For many, key project files sit inaccessible on isolated servers. Those who have successfully migrated to the cloud say it's not a move that can happen quickly, but there are things that companies can start doing now.

对于进行投资的公司而言，当前的病毒大流行是对其IT基础设施的计划外压力测试。

“It’s actually working out better than I would have expected,” says Andy Knauf, CIO and vice president at Mead & Hunt. The Middleton, Wis.-based firm has 38 offices scattered across the country. Knauf was finishing up a migration of all the company’s data and workstations to the cloud when the pandemic hit.

他说：“我从没想过我必须这样做。”“当我想到我们为这样的事情做准备的所有事情时，我的每个人都可以在与办公室相同的水平上工作。如果我们停止工作一天，那将使我们每天要花费我们坐着的时间超过一百万美元，” Knauf说。

Knauf had experimented with several cloud-based systems over the years, but eventually settled on Microsoft’s Azure cloud with Workspot. This system not only hosts the company’s data, but it also allows employees to log in to their normal work environment from any internet-connected computer to run the full suite of design software they need. All the computing power is done in the cloud, so even modest computers can navigate and work in massive BIM files.

While there were some hiccups as employees logged on from home for the first time, Knauf's team has resolved all problems, and he says the firm is back to business as usual. Even workers who thought their home internet wasn't good enough to work virtually were able to keep up. “You don’t need to have that much bandwidth to run Workspot, so even people in rural areas don’t have to have much of an internet connection to keep working," Knauf says.

Roughly 80% of the design and engineering work that Mead & Hunt performs is for public agencies, so the deadlines haven’t stopped even as the pandemic response slows private construction. “The DOTs and everything, they expect us to keep pushing through,” says Knauf. “They expect all that engineering to be done; they’ve been calling us and expect it to be finished on time.”

但是，Knauf一直在提出Mead＆Hunt政府客户的问题，他们需要远程工作的提示。“我们正在努力帮助尽可能多的人，但受到打击或错过，尤其是点。这些政府机构不像我们这样建立；他们几乎无法在环境中运行Skype。”他说。

Design firms aren’t the only ones benefiting from working in the cloud. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) specialty contractor Southland Industries had been努力转移它的所有设计详细介绍了Microsoft Azure和Workspot的工作，并且由于大流行而决定加速这些计划。Southland Industries基础设施服务高级总监Israel Sumano说：“目前，我们仍然有一些本地磁带备份，但我的计划是在2020年12月底之前将所有内容迁移到云中。”

“我们结束了migrating our Mountain-West region last December, only the Mid-Atlantic is left,” says Sumano. “ It has definitely put our company in a good position. Other MEP subcontractors are struggling right now.” Some employees still must conduct limited on-premise work, including with the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems used by project partners, but Sumano says the company is ready to keep going on projects.

转移到云基础设施需要时间，而不是危机中的即时生命线

Scattered success stories from the firms that have gone to the cloud are cold comfort to those trying to cobble something together during a pandemic.

“我本周的总统和首席执行官在本周接到电话，说他们什么都没做：他们没有为此做好准备。”“他们是我们八年前的地方。”

可耐福和Sumano规划和impleme说ntation of their cloud migration took many months, and required a transition period to maintain business continuity.

“I am willing to help ... push them in the right direction,” adds Knauf. “But some companies, however long this lasts, might not be around in three months.” Knauf says he knows of at least one company based in Pennsylvania that can’t operate at all because the total stop-work order has them locked out of their offices where all their data is sitting on servers.

虽然获得Workspot许可证的完整Azure设置可能有点多，但Knauf表示，公司绝对应该开始投资云备份，以免被锁定在自己的数据中。Panzura等公司提供云存储，在与Microsoft合作之前，Knauf在Panzura Cloud上取得了一些最初的成功，以反映公司的数据，以使其摆脱现场服务器。

But even spinning up a deployment of 20 terabytes of data for 400 workers on Panzura took Mead & Hunt six months of work. Today the company has 125 TB of data and more than 30 offices worth of employees on Azure and Workspot, after years of work.

One company called Knauf asking what to do to manage their 60 offices and 400 TB of data, with very little cloud infrastructure in place. “I said ‘you gotta get some data up there, but it’s going to be a long process,'" Knauf says.

Southland的Sumano同意，从长远来看，越早开始转移到云。“确保将所有数据都放在其属于的位置。如果这样做，您将无法掌握本地资源，您需要放手。”

Knauf notes the situation is not all hopeless for firms with limited cloud-based IT infrastructure, particularly if they are willing to triage and focus on getting a few critical projects in the cloud first. “You could get a mini infrastructure up in a week or so, take a couple projects you need, get a few Workspot licenses, go out and get 20 TB blobs of Azure storage, you could deploy there and get working. Just get started on it, throw some money at it and get done what has to to get done.”

Sumano says the time is past to stop contemplating. “When I first told [our company leadership] we were going entirely to the cloud it was a deer-in-the-headlights response, but we did it. Go out there and get it,” says Sumano.