Sunshades Eyewear is a globally recognised eyewear business, known for its collaborative culture, ethically made frames, and strong international footprint. With more than 100 staff, 20 brands, 11 websites, 5 online marketplaces, and products stocked in over 4,300 stores worldwide, Sunshades operates a highly distributed and fast-growing business.
The organisation operates an omni-channel model with a significant wholesale presence (80%), supported by a growing online and physical retail presence, with warehouses in Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands and the United States and teams based across Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States. This global scale and operational complexity requires a reliable, secure, and scalable technology platform.
Challenge
As Sunshades Eyewear continued to expand into new markets and channels, its technology environment needed to evolve to support:
- A globally distributed workforce and supply chain
- Multiple websites and online marketplaces
- Hybrid and cloud-native workloads
- Strong security and availability for business-critical systems
- Cost visibility and optimisation as cloud usage increased
Sunshades sought a Managed Services Provider that could not only operate and support its IT environment, but also act as a strategic technology partner, enabling growth while reducing operational overhead and risk.
Solution
Idea 11 was engaged to deliver its TechOps Managed Services, providing a flexible, scalable managed services model aligned to Sunshades Eyewear’s global operating model.
Through a tiered Managed Services framework, Idea 11 enabled Sunshades to select the level of service best suited to its needs, with the ability to scale services as the business grows. The model focused on proactive operations, cloud optimisation, and operational resilience.
Idea 11 operates as an extension of the Sunshades team, allowing internal staff to focus on brand growth, product development, and market expansion while Idea 11 manages the technology foundations.
Scope of Managed Services
Idea 11 provides ongoing management and support across Sunshades Eyewear’s cloud, hybrid, and end-user environments, including Sunshades:
- AWS and Azure Cloud Platforms
- Cloud platform monitoring, performance, and availability management
- Backup, recovery, and disaster recovery support
- Identity and access management (IAM)
- Security monitoring, logging, and threat detection
- Cost analysis, reporting, and optimisation
- Infrastructure & Applications
- Operating system monitoring, patching, and preventative maintenance
- Application and database support
- Serverless and DevOps environment operations
- Load balancing, scaling, and automation
- Security & Resilience
- Security incident response
- Vulnerability assessments and remediation
- Firewall and network security management
- Regular security and best-practice reviews
- End User & Collaboration Platforms
- Desktop and mobile device support
- Microsoft 365 and identity management
- Microsoft Teams Voice and collaboration support
- Service Governance
- 24×7 on-call support for cloud platforms
- Monthly service reporting and reviews
- Ongoing optimisation and strategic guidance
Result
Through its partnership with Idea 11, Sunshades Eyewear has established a stable, secure, and scalable technology platform capable of supporting its global operations.
Key outcomes include:
- Improved reliability and performance of cloud-hosted systems
- Reduced operational risk through proactive monitoring and security management
- Greater visibility and control over cloud costs
- A flexible managed services model that scales with business growth
- Internal teams freed from day-to-day IT operations to focus on strategic priorities
Why Idea 11
This engagement demonstrates Idea 11’s ability to support globally distributed, high-growth organisations with complex cloud and hybrid environments.
By combining proactive managed services, deep cloud expertise, and a customer-obsessed delivery model, Idea 11 enables organisations like Sunshades Eyewear to scale with confidence — supported by secure, resilient, and future-ready technology.
