A leading not-for-profit trade association representing America’s broadcast radio industry—supporting more than 6,000 member stations nationwide and over 1,000 member networks, representative firms, broadcast vendors, and international organizations—faced increasing pressure to reduce IT-related spending. The organization required a strategic, disciplined approach to cost optimization that preserved operational resilience, security, and the ability to support its members without disruption.

Buchanan brought the strength of a long-standing partnership and served as the organization’s trusted, end-to-end IT services provider. As a single, accountable partner, Buchanan delivered comprehensive technology services, including service desk operations, cybersecurity, network management, cloud services, and both remote and on-site support—providing the foundation needed to align IT investment with business priorities.

Following a comprehensive assessment of the organization’s existing infrastructure, Buchanan identified an opportunity to significantly reduce IT operating costs while maintaining — and in key areas improving — functionality, performance, and security. The analysis revealed that the customer’s on-premises file and storage environment could be modernized without disruption by transitioning to a cloud-based, serverless architecture.

Buchanan designed and executed a migration to Microsoft Azure Files, enabling the organization to eliminate unnecessary infrastructure dependencies while preserving seamless access to critical data. By leveraging Azure’s native scalability and integrated security capabilities, Buchanan delivered a solution that reduced complexity, minimized ongoing management requirements, and aligned IT spend more closely with actual business usage — all without compromising reliability or user experience.

The transition to Azure Files delivered measurable, enterprise-level cost savings across multiple components of the customer’s environment, including virtual machines, storage, VPN gateways, backup, site recovery, virtual networking, and associated licensing. Cost reductions across these areas ranged from 3% to 75%, resulting in an overall year-over-year IT cost reduction of approximately 25%.

Beyond financial impact, the organization strengthened its security posture by adopting Azure’s built-in data protection capabilities. All files are encrypted at rest, access is governed through granular permission controls, and file activity can be continuously monitored and audited using Azure Activity Logs. The result was a more secure, streamlined, and cost-efficient file storage environment that supports both operational stability and long-term scalability.