Products
Dell PowerEdge 1950 Server Systems
Dell/EMC AX150 Series Storage
Dell PowerConnect 2724 Gigabit Network Switches
VMware Infrastructure 3.5
Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007
Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Windows Server 2003
DocAve 4.5 from AvePoint
The Challenge
As a growing architecture and design firm, the client faced many challenges around creating, managing, storing, and referencing the abundant number of project documents and communications that daily came across employees’ desks. Until they enlisted the aid of New Age Technologies, each employee had the freedom to utilize their own preferred way of storing and managing client files, which in turn stressed the organization in times when an employee was unreachable or left the company. There were also instances where past clients called years later for additional services, and employees could not recall where the files were saved. This limited the company’s ability to manage the back up of those files and increased their risk of information loss due to hardware failure or an employee saving company information on personal files. The client wanted a solution that would fit their daily workflow processes, provide structure, and make daily activities easier and more conveneint for their employees.
The Solution
New Age Technologies completed a Business Technology/Infrastructure Assessment and Healthcheck in order to determine the support capabilities of their infrastructure and provide the client with solutions that aligned with their business goals. It was determined that by virtualizing their server infrastructure the company would realize cost savings through energy reduction and more efficient use of their infrastructure support time. This new and more stable virtual platform also gave them greater support capability for the Microsoft SharePoint document management solution that they needed. Once that platform was designed and validated through a proof of concept, New Age Technologies implemented the virtualization project and trained their team on how to manage the new virtual infrastructure.
The ROI seen from the virtualization project alone reduced the company’s operating costs for the Microsoft SharePoint Server document management solution that they chose. Based on information identified in the Business Productivity Assessment, the client accepted New Age Technologies’ recommendation for a customized workflow solution that included a portal capable of accessing and searching all of the files, emails and applications their employees used on a daily basis to serve their clients.
The Results
The solution that New Age Technologies delivered added more value than the client originally envisioned. The virtualization project gave them a more scalable infrastructure, dramatically improved the service level of their IT systems, provided an advanced ability to recover their IT systems in the event of a disaster, and realizes continuous cost savings. They now have 3 ESX servers hosting over 20 virtual machines, which save them over $11,000 annually in energy costs alone. They have gone from a recovery time of 1-2 weeks to 2-8 hours in the event that all of their hardware was lost in the data center. Additionally, their annual NPV savings on this project is $261,318, which was greater than they had planned for!
The document management solution provided the structure, security, and increased productivity that the company anticipated, but reached beyond those goals as well. Due to enhanced search capabilities, employees can search across company files with simple text searches, enabling them to access project information that otherwise might never have been found or would have taken longer to locate. This capability has improved the client’s knowledge base, protects them from the consequences of lost files or emails, and provides them the ability to better serve their clients. This solution also now allows employees to create a new project complete with all the necessary files within minutes. Once created, the workflow then incorporates templates making it easy for every document and email related to that project to be quickly saved, archived and retrieved when needed again. One of the best attributes of the system is that it was created around the staff’s preferred way to do their work for added convenience and ease of company adoption. This eliminated the stress normally associated with change. People like it so they use it… it is that easy.