The Challenge
Penske Transport Group, a leading Australian distributor of diesel and gas engines and power systems for over 60 years, operates across 19 physical branches with 800+ staff. Their brand portfolio includes MTU, Detroit Diesel, Mercedes Benz, Allison Transmission, and Kohler Power Systems.
The problem: enterprise resources were scattered across a complex array of file shares and ageing infrastructure. 17 terabytes of critical business documents lived in shared drives that couldn’t scale, couldn’t search, and couldn’t support the collaboration a national operation demands.
What started as a request for an internal marketing portal quickly grew. After consulting with Evocate, Penske made the strategic decision to consolidate everything (intranet, extranet, and document management) onto a single, modern platform.
The Solution
Evocate designed and built TheHUB: a large scale SharePoint 2013 environment running on an 8-server high availability farm:
- SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups for database redundancy
- Multiple front end servers and search components for application redundancy
- 4 distributed caches ensuring high performance across all 19 branches
- Custom branding to match Penske’s corporate identity
The scope covered every phase: requirements workshops, solution and information architecture design, infrastructure planning, farm setup and configuration, custom code development, administrator training, and full migration of 17TB from legacy file shares into the new DMS.
What Evocate delivered:
- Enterprise intranet for 800+ staff across 19 branches
- Partner extranet for external collaboration
- Full document management system replacing enterprise shared drives
- Enterprise wide notification system with news feed
- Custom SharePoint 2013 branding and web parts
The Results
| Metric | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Data migrated | 17TB from legacy file shares |
| Users onboarded | 800+ across 19 branches |
| Infrastructure | 8-server HA farm with SQL AlwaysOn |
| Delivery timeline | 6 months, concept to rollout |
| Legacy systems replaced | File shares, disparate tools, manual processes |
Penske Transport Group went from scattered shared drives to a single enterprise hub, giving every branch instant access to 17 terabytes of resources, enterprise grade search, and a modern collaboration platform.
