Service Component | Before | After |
Proactive system management on critical components. | There were more servers than anyone can efficiently keep track of manually so problems were easily missed or overlooked. It was time-consuming and difficult (and 'expensive') to monitor so many systems individually and to keep track of which may be experiencing security issues. | Our enterprise-class monitoring system allowed us to create a custom 'dashboard' which indicates at a glance the state of all the servers right down to the critical-process level for each one! We can see at a glance exactly which monitored devices have logged a security 'failure audit' such as; which device has detected a virus, and which have up-to-date virus definitions and many other security-oriented metrics. |
Proven track record of system uptime. | GCR had not established any risks or key metrics and therefore had little in the way of budgeting numbers. | After calculating key metrics to include the cost of down time GCR is no able to make informed intelligent decision regarding IT spend. |
Strategic planning | The single in-house IT person was both trying to keep up with desktop support and do all of the research and Strategic planning. Needless to say, he was having trouble keeping up! | Since CNC has researched and tested so many industry-leading products, we can quickly provide advice on what to try, what to buy, and what features may be worth additional expense. Our mantra is: What product will meet current and future business needs while having the lowest TCO? |
Flexible services | GCR has an in-house IT person who is amazingly knowledgeable and efficient. However, his plate is full! Handling change management and new business needs was difficult to squeeze in between user-support and maintenance tasks. | Since GCR has an in-house IT person, we work with him when he needs us to research, plan, and implement the big projects his daily rounds don't leave time for. We also have in-house access to expertise in everything from Exchange to Cisco to help solve those sticky problems that come up. In addition, we are able to leverage enterprise-class software that is definitely not in his company's IT budget. |
On-Demand Support & Change Management | GCR had no scalable project help outside of expensive vendor service add ons. | As mentioned above, we are available to help research, test, plan, and deploy new/replacement business systems when it's too much for the in-house staff.
Since we are already intimately familiar with their systems from monitoring them 24/7, we are immediately ready to analyze how a new product will fit in. |
Business Continuity & Disaster-Recovery Planning | Being a knowledge-based, medium-sized business, GCR already has an excellent and robust backup strategy. | As part of the server consolidation/virtualization process, we are looking at ways to use Virtualization technology to make server recovery from hardware failure nearly instantaneous. |
We implement IT industry "Best Practices" | A series of sales and acquisitions left with more gear than the core business needs demand. It was unnecessarily complex and costly.
GCR's problem wasn't server performance, just the opposite. They had way too much horsepower! | In conjunction with the in-house IT person we simplified, clarified, and documented the network so that it can be administered quickly and efficiently.
The goal of this process is to end up with enough gear to fulfill the core business requirements, no more and no less. We helped them design a server consolidation plan using virtualization which would leave them with spare servers and parts and save them thousands during their upcoming hardware refresh. |
Regular security audits. | GCR had no way to test external security. | We test GCR's external security once a year or anytime a change is made to the security systems to make sure their system is secure. |
Bottom-Line Results | Over-spending on IT hardware was having a dire effect on the bottom line. | GCR will save many thousands during their upcoming refresh (and all future ones). Their network will be easier to modify which will also save thousands in consulting and personnel costs each time a new service is introduced! |
