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Top Stairs modernises IT to keep pace with rapid growth — legacy Fortran estimating system lifted to the cloud

Top Stairs modernized their legacy Fortran estimating system, moving to Azure RemoteApp and transforming their IT infrastructure to support growth.

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Industry
Joinery / Carpentry
Team size
10-20 people
Location
Thebarton, SA
Plan
Fortress
Platform
Microsoft Azure RemoteApp + Microsoft 365 + Teams Phone + Intune + ThreatLocker
Compliance
Essential Eight ML1

Meet the client

Top Stairs & Staff Pty Ltd is one of Adelaide's leading suppliers of staircases, stair kits, balustrading and staircase components. The business has experienced strong, sustained growth — more orders, more staff, more complex jobs — and that growth has been driven in large part by a genuine competitive advantage: a proprietary estimating application, written in Fortran and refined over years, that produces accurate staircase quotes faster than anything else in the local market. Leadership had a clear ambition: keep growing — without IT becoming the thing that slowed them down.

What they were up against

External

The IT environment that had served Top Stairs well in earlier years was no longer keeping pace with the business. A single on-premise server in the office ran everything — file shares, day-to-day workloads, and the proprietary Fortran estimating application that sat at the centre of the quoting process. As order volumes climbed, the load on that one server climbed with them. The estimating application — the most demanding workload in the environment — would lock up under pressure, sometimes for 45 minutes or more at a stretch, with staff unable to progress quotes until it came back. Because the application could only run on the office server, there was no practical way for key staff to catch up on quotes from home after hours when the day's workload demanded it.

Internal

Leadership could see what was coming. The same proprietary application that was driving the growth was now, paradoxically, the thing most likely to slow the next phase down. Key staff felt the pressure most — quoting needed to keep up with sales, but the system they depended on was the bottleneck. Everyone knew the environment had simply been outgrown. What worked at one scale was straining at the next.

A growing Australian business that has built a genuine competitive advantage shouldn't have to choose between keeping the specialised software that sets it apart and modernising the platform around it. The right partner should be able to do both.

How we stepped in

Otaris understood two things from the first conversation. First, the estimating application could not be touched lightly — it was the engine of the business and the source of Top Stairs' competitive edge. Second, the team needed an IT partner that could deliver a complete refresh in step with their growth, not a series of point fixes. With deep experience modernising growing Australian businesses — moving on-premise workloads to the cloud, deploying Microsoft 365, replacing legacy phone systems, and uplifting cybersecurity to Essential Eight — and a willingness to work hand-in-hand with the original developer of the Fortran application to preserve what made it valuable, Otaris was well placed to build the platform Top Stairs needed for the next phase.

What we delivered

  1. Discovery and roadmap

    Map every workload running on the on-premise server, identify dependencies (especially around the Fortran estimating application), and design a staged plan that retired the server only once each workload had a safe new home in the cloud.

  2. Estimating application to Microsoft Azure RemoteApp

    Work directly with the developer of the proprietary Fortran application to package it for Azure RemoteApp, running in a managed cloud container. The application now runs in a stable, scalable environment, accessed by staff from any device — without changing the application itself.

  3. Microsoft 365 and file migration

    Roll out Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. Migrate the on-premise file shares into Microsoft Teams so documents live in the cloud, can be reached from inside or outside the office, and support real-time co-editing.

  4. Microsoft Teams Phone — legacy PBX retired

    Replace the on-premise phone system with Microsoft Teams Phone running on cloud SIP trunks. The team uses a mix of physical Teams handsets in the office and Teams on their computers and mobiles, so calls follow the right person rather than the desk.

  5. Cybersecurity uplift to Essential Eight Maturity Level 1

    Enrol every endpoint into Microsoft Intune for centralised device management. Move from traditional signature-based antivirus to ThreatLocker application whitelisting. Add an off-site cloud backup for the Microsoft 365 tenant.

  6. Server decommission and managed services

    Once every workload was running reliably in the cloud, retire the on-premise server and move Top Stairs onto Otaris's Fortress managed services plan — covering 24/7 monitoring, helpdesk support, and ongoing cybersecurity governance.

The cost of inaction

Top Stairs' growth was real and ongoing. Without a complete refresh, IT would have become the brake on the business — not the platform for the next phase. The estimating system would continue to lock up under increased load, holding back quoting at exactly the moment when more quotes were needed. The on-premise server would continue to age toward the failure that eventually takes any business of that profile offline for days. Key staff would remain unable to catch up on work outside the office when volume demanded it.

Before and after

Before
After
  • Legacy Fortran estimating app on an over-stretched on-premise server — lock-ups of 45+ minutes were common under load
    Estimating app runs in Microsoft Azure RemoteApp — stable, scalable, no crashes
  • Estimating app only accessible from the office — no way for key staff to catch up on quotes from home
    Estimating app accessible from anywhere — key staff can keep up with growth from the office or from home when needed
  • File shares stuck on the on-premise server — no remote access, no co-editing
    Files in Microsoft Teams / SharePoint — anywhere access, real-time co-editing in Word and Excel
  • Legacy on-premise phone system — calls tied to the desk
    Microsoft Teams Phone on cloud SIP trunks — calls reach the right person on a desk handset, laptop or mobile
  • Traditional signature-based antivirus only — no application whitelisting, no MDM
    ThreatLocker application whitelisting + Microsoft Intune device management on every endpoint
  • No off-site backup of Microsoft 365 data
    Independent off-site cloud backup of the Microsoft 365 tenant — email, files and Teams data recoverable
  • No formal cybersecurity framework
    Essential Eight Maturity Level 1 in place
  • On-premise server consuming power, requiring maintenance, sitting as a single point of failure
    On-premise server fully decommissioned — no on-site hardware to maintain, no single point of failure

Where they are now

The platform that defines Top Stairs' competitive advantage — the proprietary Fortran estimating application — now runs reliably in the cloud, ready to scale with the business rather than constrain it. Key staff can pick up where they left off from home after hours when the day's workload demands it, without losing access to the system that drives quoting.

Calls follow the team rather than the desk, so growth in headcount and flexibility don't translate into missed enquiries. Documents live in Teams and SharePoint, so people across the business can work on the same Word or Excel file in real time.

Cybersecurity has been brought into line with the standards expected of a growing Australian business — Essential Eight Maturity Level 1, with Intune managing every device, ThreatLocker controlling which applications are allowed to run, and an off-site backup of the Microsoft 365 tenant providing recovery independence. The on-premise server is gone, and with it the single point of failure that had quietly become the largest risk in the environment.