Construction Computer Software (CCS) from Candy

Construction Computer Software (CCS) is dedicated to providing specialised software solutions for the construction and engineering industries. Formed in the 1980’s, CCS has evolved alongside the technology used in the industry to provide solutions developed by contractors, for contractors. In 2007, a merger between CCS and BuildSmart married the strengths of the CCS Candy Estimating and Project Control software with those of the BuildSmart Cost and Enterprise Management software to create a unique integrated project lifecycle control solution. Today, CCS has more than 40 000 users in over 50 countries.

CCS’s Candy Estimation and Project Control Software provides a link between the Bill of Quantity (BOQ) and the construction program or schedule of work, providing a single user interface to eliminate departmental silos. This desktop application improves speed, accuracy, transparency and auditability of estimation and project controls while reducing mistakes, and are used by small, medium and large companies worldwide.

In keeping with the company’s drive to stay ahead of its customers’ needs, CCS wanted to provision a version of the Candy solution enabling an as-a-Service (aaS) offering. The new cloud-based solution needed to offer all of the benefits of the existing Windows application, while enabling Candy (Single and Multi-User) and QTO (2D & 3D – Navisworks) to be deployed online and accessed from any location around the world.

CCS evaluated a number of different cloud solutions to establish whether Candy could be easily transformed into an as-a-Service offering. Partnering with iOCO, the company elected to use Amazon WorkSpaces to power the Candy Cloud Solution.

Amazon WorkSpaces is a managed, secure cloud desktop service that allows the quick and easy provisioning of desktops at scale. This service helps eliminate many administrative tasks associated with managing the desktop lifecycle including provisioning, deploying, maintaining, and recycling desktops. The result is less hardware inventory to manage and no need for complex virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments that don’t scale.

With iOCO providing the AWS expertise along with a fully managed service, CCS was able to optimise its existing solution to run on all operating systems as well as adding functionality such as provisioning an online, centralised database for each client, containing all company project data. Deployed within an Amazon Virtual Private Network (VPC), the solution provides each user with access to persistent, encrypted storage volumes in the AWS Cloud, and integrates with the AWS Key Management Service (KMS). These features, combined with the fact that no user data is stored on the local device, ensure that the solution offers full data security.

In addition, AWS Directory Service for Simple AD ensured that it was easy for CCS to create user accounts to allow access to AWS Workspaces & AWS WorkDocs. Daily snapshots of AWS Simple AD enable point-in-time recovery in the event of possible Simple AD Corruption or other issues.