Overview
When England-Thims & Miller’s (ETM) Geospatial Technologies team set out to expand their client-facing solution, DeepVUE Geospatial, they quickly realized their on-prem and Azure environments couldn’t keep up with demand. Frequent outages, limited IT bandwidth, and scalability challenges threatened growth. By partnering with ROK Technologies, ETM successfully migrated DeepVUE to Amazon Web Services (AWS) — achieving enterprise-grade reliability, faster performance, and cost efficiency.
Today, ETM’s GIS department has transformed from an internal cost center into a revenue-generating engine, built on a stable, scalable cloud foundation.
About England-Thims & Miller (ETM)
Founded in 1977, England-Thims & Miller (ETM) is Florida’s leading infrastructure and development consulting firm. Guided by its mission to serve as “trusted advisors, creating community,” ETM delivers expertise in planning, surveying, transportation, water resources, utilities, construction management, and geospatial technologies. The firm partners with both public and private sector clients across Florida to deliver innovative, data-driven solutions.
About ETM’s Geospatial Technologies
ETM’s Geospatial Technologies (GST) department integrates authoritative data with dynamic visualization tools to improve decision-making and client outcomes. Partnering with leading GIS technology providers such as Esri and Cartegraph/OpenGov, the team builds comprehensive, interactive web-based mapping systems that connect people, processes, and products. “We work with Esri partners to solve our challenges and enhance the ecosystem like partnering with ROK for systems administration,” said Daniel Johns, GISP, Director of Geospatial Technologies.
Daniel Johns leads the GST department, focusing on GIS, asset management, client solutions, and partnerships. Under his leadership, the team has grown rapidly and evolved into a revenue-generating business unit.
Olivia DeSimone, Geospatial Program Manager, leads a six-person GIS team focused on managing geospatial data and delivering tailored solutions to both ETM’s internal engineering teams and external clients. She brings extensive local government GIS experience from her work with the City of Altamonte Springs, helping ETM bridge traditional engineering with cutting-edge geospatial innovation.
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The Challenge: DeepVUE’s growth outpaced on-prem and Azure
ETM’s Geospatial Technologies team had big ambitions. Their client-facing solution, DeepVUE Geospatial, was gaining traction — but their infrastructure wasn’t keeping up.“We have a client-facing solution that simply can’t experience outages.” said Daniel Johns
At first, ETM hosted DeepVUE through its internal enterprise environment, supported by a single IT staff member. This single resource was not enough for the demands of DeepVUE, and the environment experienced frequent outages with undefined responsibilities between GIS and IT teams.
“It’s always such a weird relationship trying to support enterprise GIS on-prem. What do the IT people do? What do the GIS people do?,” explained Olivia DeSimone, Geospatial Program Manager. IT has their own priorities they need to address – employee support like software installs and troubleshooting. The GIS team had additional IT needs for external client-facing systems that required more specialized knowledge, attention and resources than the IT team had available. As Olivia shared, “That gap left us taking on the burden ourselves.”
Additionally, ETM tried to migrate to the cloud with Azure, but that initial effort fell short for a variety of reasons. While the Azure serverless deployment offered certain advantages, it wasn’t the optimal configuration for ETM’s specific requirements, budget and administrative needs. ETM needed additional expertise in cloud administration and management to effectively scale. At the same time, ETM’s GIS team was rapidly expanding. From five to 23 employees in just four years, the department evolved from an internal support group into a revenue-generating business unit. Supporting that growth meant DeepVUE needed a stable, scalable, and cost-competitive environment.
Challenges Snapshot
- Outages in on-prem environment
- Initial cloud deployment configuration issues
- Small IT staff (1 person at the time)
- Quickly growing GIS team: 5 → 23 employees
- DeepVUE demanded 99.9% uptime
02
The Solution: Partnering with ROK Technologies to migrate to AWS
The turning point came when ETM partnered with ROK Technologies, after reconnecting at an Esri partner event. ROK migrated DeepVUE and ETM’s ArcGIS Enterprise environment from Azure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) — completing the project in just eight weeks. The timing was perfect: AWS offered better performance and flexibility; ROK provided the expertise to design an optimal cloud architecture. Together ensuring a seamless transition.
“The migration was straightforward, and the value was clear,” Johns recalled. “What we were paying each month was about the same, but with ROK and AWS, we got so much more: AWS workstations, additional infrastructure, and administrative support. The cost justified itself immediately.”
ROK’s role didn’t stop at migration. They became and continue to be ETM’s GIS Managed Cloud services partner (MCSP), handling environment management, performance tuning, and upgrades. “Having that second layer of support beyond Esri has been huge,” DeSimone shared. “Navigating Esri Technical Support is a skillset all its own. With ROK, we have a trusted partner who can troubleshoot with us and guide us, while still letting us lean on Esri when needed.”
ROK also provided a dedicated client success manager and ongoing monthly check-ins. “Sometimes the meetings are just 10 minutes because everything’s fine,” said DeSimone. “Other times, we’ve got a list of things to tackle. That constant communication is huge.”
Migration Success
- 8-week migration completed on time
- Managed ArcGIS Enterprise on AWS
- Monthly client success check-ins for proactive support
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The Benefits: Stability, Efficiency, and Room to Grow
Reliability and confidence: Moving to a ROK managed AWS environment, DeepVUE runs without disruption. Outages that once derailed workflows have been eliminated. “At my old job, outages could wipe out an entire day of productivity,” DeSimone said. “Now, that’s not even a concern. We have a stable foundation we can rely on.”
Lower costs and broader expertise: Instead of hiring additional full-time staff, ETM gained access to an entire team of ROK Esri, IT, Cloud and GIS professionals. “We essentially saved the cost of a full-time employee while diversifying our resource pool,” Johns explained. “We’re not dependent on a single person anymore — we have a whole team backing us.”
Faster upgrades and less overhead: Routine upgrades and system changes became painless. “Being able to get the environment upgraded at the drop of a hat is phenomenal,” DeSimone said. “At my old organization, that would have taken weeks of planning and coordination. With ROK, it just happens.”
With infrastructure worries off their plate, ETM turned its focus toward growth and expanding its service offerings for their clients. The ETM GST team continues to scale DeepVUE into a mutually valuable, revenue-generating client solution with growing adoption. And pushing further by developing a Digital Twin platform to give agencies real-time modeling of physical systems.
They also implement and deploy ArcGIS Monitor so the team can proactively watch for outages, track response times, and manage client expectations more effectively. “We’re going to use ArcMonitor to see if our clients are having service outages or delays,” said DeSimone. “That lets us enhance their experience the same way ROK has helped us enhance ours.”
For ETM, the partnership has reshaped how they think about client service. “ROK doesn’t just handle setup and maintenance,” Johns explained. “They make strategic recommendations and help us think ahead. That kind of relationship is what lets us provide the same level of trust and reliability to our clients.”
Benefits Realized
- Saved cost of 1 FTE by outsourcing infrastructure management
- Zero unplanned outages impacting clients
- Instant upgrades vs. weeks of planning on-prem
- Seamless ArcGIS Monitor deployment
- DeepVUE growth + Digital Twin development
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Conclusion: Building the future on solid ground
While the migration from on-premises and Azure to AWS might have seemed daunting at first, the partnership with ROK Technologies and AWS has been transformational. DeepVUE now runs on a stable, scalable platform. Outages are gone. Costs are controlled. And the GIS team can focus on innovation, not infrastructure. “Without a stable foundation, it’s impossible to build the home of your dreams. ROK and AWS gave us that foundation, and now we’re building the future we envisioned” said Olivia DeSimone.
Today, ETM’s Geospatial Technologies team is positioned not just to support the company’s projects, but to drive its future by driving new revenue, expanding DeepVUE’s adoption, and leading initiatives like Digital Twin development — all made possible by a reliable cloud foundation.
Final Words: What Would be Your Advice to Peers?
Don’t go it alone. Having a partner to shepherd you through the cloud journey makes all the difference.
It was easier than expected. Look at ROI, talk to peers, and leverage Esri’s partner network.
At ROK, we take your GIS to the Cloud.
Contact us today to see how we can help your organization.
