Known for its proven results and partnership-driven approach, Choate Construction Company’s employee-owners provide nationally recognized commercial construction services for its clients and industry partners. Offering the benefits of a nationwide contractor with the dedicated touch of a local firm, Choate Construction’s specialized personnel consistently deliver successful projects across a variety of market sectors, including industrial, healthcare, hospitality, corporate, mixed-use, and more. From its innovative OneLife safety program to its philanthropic efforts to “Build Up” its communities, Choate’s ultimate purpose is to enrich the world through the people, places, and relationships it builds. 

As Choate grew, so did the company’s information, creating challenges with permissions, folder structures, accessibility, performance, and storage. Even with AWS cloud infrastructure, Choate saw an opportunity to further optimize and streamline how company information was managed at scale. Its technology investment in Egnyte made that optimization possible. 

Challenge: Traditional Cloud Solutions and Local IT Miss the Mark

Over the course of Waters’ career, she has seen the use of technology in the construction industry proliferate to the point that her company, whose tech stack once consisted of little more than Microsoft Office and preconstruction software, now uses more than 60 different applications. But while Choate has been an early tech adopter, scaling information across multiple offices and jobsites proved challenging.  

This created significant hurdles for the company. As Waters explains, “When a new job started or a physical office renovated or relocated, we had to figure out: Do we need to add servers? What other hardware is needed? How are we handling permissions?” Juggling cloud and local infrastructure increased administrative costs and workload. Prior to Egnyte, teams utilized Citrix to access file servers remotely, which, while effective for its time, wasn’t designed with a mobile-first user experience in mind. 

Choate could not remain reliant on infrastructure that involved storing data in multiple locations, was difficult to permission at scale, and difficult to access remotely. Instead, the company needed a solution that married scalable cloud infrastructure with scalable permissions. Choate’s IT team set about looking for a technology partner that could make that happen. 

Solution: A Secure, Centralized Cloud Environment in Egnyte

• Prowess in the AEC space 
  Egnyte’s track record of serving—and understanding the unique needs of—the construction industry was “hugely important,” Waters says. “Project files in construction can have unique requirements, it was critical for us to work with a partner that understood that complexity. Egnyte is just that partner. Whether it’s the simple process of adding content from their mobile app, Egnyte’s Procore integration, or the ease with which we can search content or access it remotely, Egnyte’s understanding of construction helps us in many ways.” 
  
• Governing content access 
  Also impressive was how easy Egnyte made it to gain full visibility into where content was stored and who had access to it. The Choate team could set access permissions on project templates to have project security 85% setup before project folders were created in Egnyte. “Setting and managing file permissions can get complicated,” Waters says. “We love the simplicity of using groups and preconfiguring the majority of our permissions. We can audit access easier and administer access changes quickly.” Waters also comments on the impact this had in reducing security vulnerabilities: “Egnyte helped us follow least privileged access. Before, we struggled to see who had access to what, or where content was stored. Now all it takes is a quick look in Egnyte to see all of our content and how it’s permissioned.” 
  
• User experience 
  Based on her experience with other technology solutions, Waters expected pushback and learning curves when it came time to implement Egnyte. None of that happened. As she explains, “Our users love Egnyte, particularly the remote access functionality. If they’re traveling and there’s a project question, they can view the content in Egnyte’s mobile app and resolve questions quickly. We’ve never had that ease of access for project files, it’s a game changer for accessibility.” 

Once Egnyte was implemented, it served as a centralized location for content, governed by granular permissions with flexible yet secure accessibility. In fact, when Choate decided to open their seventh location, permissions and folder structures were preconfigured, employee-owners in that division had immediate access to Egnyte’s cloud environment — no server setup or additional IT administration necessary. 

Benefits: A Clear Runway for Uninterrupted Productivity

With Egnyte, Choate has removed many of its information accessibility challenges and the headaches that came with them. Information is more accessible—and better secured—than ever before. The firm’s confidence in its ability to control information access is heading in the right direction. All of this has broken down the impediments that had previously caused frustration. “Egnyte has made us a more productive company,” Waters says. “In the past, we had to pause to discuss servers, storage, backups, and permissions – our discussions on those topics now are half what they once were. We can add users, storage, and change permissions directly in Egnyte quickly and easily in most cases.” 

Moving to Egnyte also presented Choate with an unexpected option when opening their seventh location: the possibility of a serverless office. The Choate team is continuing to test this concept and are excited to see the many impacts this infrastructure flexibility could have in the future. Being able to focus on being a builder and less on IT infrastructure is a win for the team’s productivity. And while they expect to have a few physical servers stick around, the hope is to leverage Egnyte’s scalability to limit that. 

Another accelerator: The Egnyte team’s readiness to give Choate support during all phases. “Egnyte is truly dedicated to our success,” Waters says. “During our implementation and post-implementation, our Egnyte Customer Success and Account Team have been responsive and informative. We work with a lot of technology companies and have experienced service decrease post-sales or post-implementation. When we have a challenge, Egnyte has stepped up to help without asking for professional service agreements for every little thing, that means a lot to our working relationship. Egnyte is committed to getting Choate to full utilization of the platform by keeping us in the loop on new features and doing ad-hoc training with our team.” 

With Egnyte up and running, Choate’s IT team is enjoying the peace of mind that the company’s partnership with Egnyte has provided. “Between information security and access limitations, there were so many hurdles that made technology work against us instead of for us,” she explains. “It’s empowering to see many of those hurdles become secondary concerns with Egnyte in our toolbox.” 

Campbell University, a private institution serving approximately 5,000 students, faced significant challenges due to escalating electronic data, network complexity, and stricter security regulations. Its lean IT team struggled with fragmented on-premises file storage, burdensome permission management, and outdated data sharing methods that presented security vulnerabilities and compliance risk. Recognizing these pressures, Campbell initiated a strategic cloud migration to centralize content and enhance data protection.

Partnering with Egnyte, Campbell achieved digital transformation. The secure cloud platform streamlined IT operations, empowered departmental users with self-service file permissions, and fostered real-time collaboration. Crucially, Egnyte fortified the university’s data security posture with advanced features like ransomware detection and robust data governance, facilitating compliance with evolving regulatory requirements.

The Challenge: Overwhelmed IT, Fragmented Data, and Growing Compliance Pressures

Prior to its strategic cloud migration, Campbell University grappled with escalating IT and data management challenges. Assistant CIO John Skuce noted a dramatic increase in electronic data and network size in recent years, with thousands of devices requiring protection. Document and network security became paramount concerns, adding significant pressure to the IT department.

A primary hurdle for the university's already-busy IT staff was the administrative burden of local file storage. "We have a very small staff, and we spent so much time upgrading servers, and assigning permissions to various folders and files," Skuce explained. It was also difficult to maintain version control when files were shared as email attachments.

From a financial perspective, Deborah Gibbs, University Bursar, highlighted challenges in handling sensitive financial documents. “There was an attitude that data breaches happened to others but not here or in higher ed in general, and it was solely IT’s responsibility.” Sensitive information was often shared through physical storage devices or sent via campus mail, email attachments, and fax…methods that lacked the robust security and centralized control now deemed essential.

The evolving regulatory landscape, including HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), led the university to confront the reality that data security was no longer optional. Gibbs underscored this, stating, "We understood that there are consequences, both financial and reputational, for non-compliance."

Solution: A Unified Platform for Campus Efficiency and Security

To address its data management and security challenges, Campbell University implemented Egnyte as its comprehensive content platform, enabling a new approach to file storage, collaboration, and data governance. The move addressed administrative burdens on its small IT department, particularly by empowering departmental users with permission management. Skuce stated, "Egnyte has enabled us to offload a lot of administrative tasks directly to our users, which has helped us tremendously. Now IT can focus on more strategic initiatives.” The platform’s ease of use led to rapid, widespread adoption, with approximately 850 users across administrative and academic departments. Gibbs expressed, "I was surprised how quickly Egnyte was embraced by the university community after its implementation. People were eager to learn it, and everyone is actually using it."

 

Empowering Collaboration and Ensuring Robust Security

Egnyte transformed campus-wide collaboration by replacing fragmented legacy methods with seamless Microsoft 365 integration. This allowed users to share secure links instead of email attachments, while enabling real-time co-editing of documents. Skuce affirmed, “Now, it's very easy to share links, and people can collaborate in real-time on a single document, which has been incredibly helpful.” Beyond collaboration, Egnyte’s Secure & Govern product provides crucial data protection capabilities. “My favorite aspect of Egnyte is ransomware protection, which helps me sleep better at night.” 

Driving Efficiency in Financial Settings

In the Bursar's office, Egnyte enhanced the management of sensitive financial data. Protected information can be securely emailed to parents and students via links. Internally, Egnyte facilitates secure file sharing with critical teams like bill clearance, general counsel, and finance, streamlining daily operations. Gibbs stated, “Egnyte has provided the Bursar's office a tool to be more confident in the way that we handle and protect sensitive information.” Audit processes are also streamlined. Campbell teams can set up secure folders for sharing sensitive student and financial data with external auditors, overcoming previous difficulties with cumbersome portals and access. Gibbs affirmed that "providing access to the audit team has been extremely easy" with Egnyte's simple permission features.

Results: Enhanced Efficiency, Strengthened Security, and Campus-Wide Empowerment

Egnyte’s implementation yielded significant results across Campbell University, fundamentally transforming its operational efficiency, security posture, and collaborative capabilities.

The IT department experienced a substantial reduction in its administrative burden. By enabling departments to manage their own file permissions, valuable IT resources are freed up for more strategic initiatives. The rapid and widespread user adoption was a key indicator of success.

Collaboration across campus has been dramatically improved. Cross-functional departments can now easily share secure links and co-edit documents in real-time. Skuce explained that this new collaborative environment has streamlined work processes throughout the university. The ability to collaborate seamlessly has also generated environmental benefits, by significantly reducing the amount of paper used at the university. This unified approach has created a centralized repository for all critical documents, including student, faculty, and payroll data, enhancing overall document security.

The Bursar's office has greater confidence and control over sensitive financial data. This newfound confidence stems from the ability to securely send protected information externally to parents, students and auditors, as well as internal teams.

Finally, Egnyte has significantly enhanced job satisfaction and operational flexibility across Campbell University. Team members can now access information securely from anywhere, at any time. Gibbs summarized the impact, stating, "Egnyte literally brings everyone together, which has improved the effectiveness, efficiency, and overall job satisfaction for our team members.”