Why balbek bureau designs architecture in the cloud
28.04.2023
In October 2022, Ukrainian business faced power outages. For a well-known architectural office, this meant a complete halt of project development. We tell how migration to the GigaCloud cloud helped the company restore projects and work despite a blackout.
balbek bureau is an architectural interior design workshop founded by Slava Balbek and Boris Dorogov. Designs commercial, corporate and residential spaces in Europe, USA, and Asia. The workshop crossed the mark of 125 implemented projects, the total area of which reached more than 135,000 sq m. Among them: Kyiv Food Market food hall and Thailand Hi restaurant, the offices of BANDA Agency and Grammarly, Lumberjack and Bursa hotels.
Kyiv Food Market food hall. The project won the MasterPrize architectural award and the Commercial Interior Winner award
Task
balbek bureau has 56 employees, 41 of whom are architects. The project design for future offices, restaurants, hotels, or houses is done in ArchiCAD software. It is intended for designing architectural and building structures and solutions, as well as landscape elements, furniture, etc. For a long time, this program was hosted on a personal company server located in Kyiv.
With the beginning of russia’s mass shelling of the Ukrainian critical infrastructure and power outages, issues with access to the server emerged. Architects could not work in the app, which slowed down the projects' development. To achieve fault tolerance of the program and avoid unwished-for downtime, it was decided that ArchiCAD should move to the cloud.
Bursa boutique hotel in Kyiv. The project won the international IIDA Global Excellence Awards in the category of best hotel design
Solution
The balbek bureau workshop chose the GigaCloud VMware-based cloud infrastructure. Being recommended upon and having good reputation on the market became decisive in the selection process.
«The migration of the design app to the cloud was successful. We made it on the weekend, which allowed us not to take up the working time of our architects,» says Borys Dorogov, managing partner and COO of balbek bureau, «If there are any technical problems, our system administrator and GigaCloud technical support specialists quickly fix them.»
balbek bureau architects work from different parts of Ukraine and Europe. The cloud allows numerous specialists to connect to programs and work on the development of projects remotely at the same time. The only requirement is having internet connection.
This way, the company's employees work entirely in the cloud, and backup copies of data are stored on a personal server.
Grammarly office in Kyiv
Results
The joint efforts of GigaCloud specialists and a balbek bureau system administrator managed to achieve maximum fault tolerance of design programs.
Besides, working in the cloud provided a number of advantages:
- Flexible scaling of cloud technical resources.
- Organization of architects’ efficient remote work.
- Delegation of infrastructure administration tasks to operator’s experts.
- Technical support 24/7.
«We pay GigaCloud for the fact that nothing bad happens to us. Programs work stably, and our architects stick to deadlines,» says Borys Dorogov, managing partner and COO of balbek bureau, «We have a first-hand experience of how beneficial working in the cloud is, so we will host new programs and services there as well.»