Ewing Group of Companies, a Greater Toronto Area manufacturer of flagpoles, traffic and lighting products, and custom metal poles, has trusted Omega Network Solutions with its managed IT services since May 2022. In that time, Omega has rebuilt Ewing’s entire technology environment, including servers, email, and phone systems, and moved it into the cloud and later into Microsoft Azure, all without a disruption that staff would notice. The result: 100% system uptime since the migration. Here’s how we did it, even when the circumstances made it harder than it needed to be.

The Challenge

A Provider That Wouldn’t Let Go

Before Omega, Ewing’s day-to-day IT support was inconsistent and, at times, openly uncooperative. When the family-owned manufacturer decided to switch providers, the outgoing IT contact wasn’t willing to help with a smooth handover. That left Omega to assess Ewing’s environment, plan a full migration, and execute it without the benefit of guidance or access most transitions rely on.

That meant Omega’s team had to work around the situation rather than through it: figuring out the existing environment independently, building a new one in parallel, and doing it all without adding any stress to Ewing’s day-to-day operations. For a business that depends on constant access to engineering drawings, order systems, and email, that reliability wasn’t optional—it was the whole point.

The Solution

The Results

Systems That Are Simply Always On

Since the original migration, Ewing has maintained 100% system uptime — no outages, no unplanned downtime. Staff doesn’t think about whether email, files, or phones will be available—they just are. That reliability carried over to the 2024 Azure migration as well, which Ewing’s team barely noticed in real time.

Beyond uptime, the shift has changed how Ewing’s leadership thinks about IT altogether. What used to be a daily source of stress is now simply infrastructure that runs in the background, freeing the team to focus on the business rather than firefighting technology issues. Omega also worked with Ewing to strengthen its cybersecurity posture by helping them evaluate proposed cyber insurance liability coverage. That kind of support falls outside strict IT scope, but it reflects the kind of practical guidance Ewing has come to rely on.

Remote Work That Doesn’t Skip a Beat

One member of Ewing’s team works full-time from Jamaica, with day-to-day access to the same systems and files as anyone in the Toronto office. Omega set up and manages that access directly, so distance doesn’t create a second class of IT support.

That setup was tested for real during a hurricane that knocked out local communications. Once connectivity in the area returned, the employee was back in Ewing’s systems and working again almost immediately—proof that the environment Omega built holds up under real-world conditions, not just during a controlled migration window.