As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, if your company is looking for ways to enhance IT capabilities and efficiencies by migrating to a cloud-based infrastructure, you’re best served by looking for a solutions provider instead of an IT company that simply sells products. The real advantage of the cloud is that it is not a product; it’s a flexible and scalable platform that can be customized as a solution to match specific business needs and objectives.
Last month, I shared sort of a mini case study as an example of how cloud-based solutions can be molded to support the needs of a large-scale builder. In this article, I’ll use a similar format to share how a solutions-based approach was leveraged to develop a tailored IT operation for one of our financial services clients – let’s call them FSC (for Financial Services Company).
The Challenge
FSC came to us after experiencing consistent problems with its computer and phone systems – issues that were having a direct, negative impact on productivity and profitability. The first step was a discovery meeting to understand FSC’s needs and expectations, and to determine the problems in the current system that were keeping the organization from achieving its goals. Here’s what we found out about the existing system …
FSC was housing all of its servers on site and outsourcing their management to an IT company. Whenever FSC wanted to integrate a new application or any type of software, the software company would provide the specs and requirements, which FSC would relay to the IT company. The IT company would install new applications without looking at the system holistically, which resulted in a system that was pieced together. FSC was also paying for backup services, but didn’t fully understand what it was getting. When FSC started having server issues and crashes, it found out that certain data was not being backed up. Furthermore, email was being handled on site and had multiple limitations, including incompatibility with certain applications, storage capacity, functionality and device synchronization. FSC’s Internet was supported by a T1 server, was lacking bandwidth, and ran far too slowly for its needs. Its remote access was greatly limited and provided a slow, simplified, partial version of the in-office user experience. As problems began occurring more frequently, FSC had trouble determining whom to call. Its IT provider would only address server issues (and usually not right away). FSC’s administrative staff was forced to deal with a different provider for:
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