Click this fun animation to see how ISG supports IT teams with managed services and infrastructure solutions. Our experts help you manage innovation projects such as shared storage, virtualization, disaster recovery, security, mobility and UC collaboration projects.
When a St. Louis area bank needed help with a sluggish WAN, they turned to ISG for help. When the lines at Midwest BankCentre started to grow unusually long due to a sluggish network and unresponsive business applications, Larry Albrecht, senior vice president of operations, thought he knew the answer—a new T1 connection.
“We’re a midsize community bank here in the St. Louis area,” said Albrecht. “We do not have a large IT staff. So, when we need help with our technology we typically turn to an outside provider.”
Because Albrecht had already established a good working relationship with ISG Technology, he brought his network bandwidth issues to them for help. “When Larry first contacted us about his problem he was sure that they needed to add a new T1 line,” said Shanon Lightle, account executive at ISG. “I asked him if he would allow us to run an assessment of his network first to determine what his exact problems were before he invested in a new T1 connection. Thankfully, he said ‘yes.’”
With Albrecht’s blessing, a senior network engineer with ISG installed a PacketShaper from Blue Coat to assess their network performance issues. What ISG discovered was eye-opening.
“The basic problem was that we had limited to no visibility, or control of our network,” Albrecht said. “But bandwidth wasn’t our biggest problem.”
The PacketShaper that ISG installed also provided them with a granular level of insight into the bank’s Internet usage during business hours. That’s where they discovered two things. “First, we discovered that a portion of our problem was caused by employees checking their Gmail, updating Facebook and watching YouTube videos, bogging down what bandwidth we had available.” said Albrecht. But this wasn’t their biggest challenge.
“Not only was our connection to corporate email and file sharing running slow,” he said, “but our business application that supports our client account creation and modification was practically unusable, causing updates to client accounts to take, on average, about 15 minutes.” These two issues combined to create long lines at the bank counter and a lot of unhappy clients.
In response to these concerns, ISG installed a Blue Coat Mach5 WAN Optimization solution, which allowed Albrecht’s staff to drastically reduce the size of their business data and file transfers, and increase their bandwidth by 90 percent.
In addition, files and applications that previously required more than 15 minutes to open and update were now responding in fewer than 60 seconds. ISG also deployed a Blue Coat PacketShaper to allow Albrecht and staff to begin shaping their recreational traffic and set maximum thresholds giving priority to business applications. The business results were dramatic. Lines got smaller. Clients smiled more often, and employees at the bank got their work done faster and with less stress. Albrecht was pleased.
“We talked to a couple of different IT service providers about our need for a better solution to our bandwidth problem,” he said, “but we went with ISG primarily because we were comfortable with what we’d experienced with them in the past.”
As happy as Albrecht is with the results, he’s quick to admit that the project had its share of road bumps along the way. “I’ll be real honest, we ran into a few snags with this, when our NetApp SAN application encountered some issues. But ISG was quick to involve NetApp’s engineering team to address that problem,” said Albrecht. “It was gratifying to know that ISG’s relationship with the vendor allowed them to get such a quick response to our problem. ISG did a very good job of jumping on the issues and dealing with frustrations as we encountered them.”
Thanks to ISG’s assessment of the bank’s network, Midwest was able to increase client satisfaction, address their bandwidth issues, and optimize their business applications to improve responsiveness and regain control of their network.
“What I like about ISG is that they’re not a large, anonymous company,” said Albrecht, “and when I call them I’m not talking to an operator in an enormous call center who creates a trouble ticket and maybe calls us back in a few days. Instead, I know that ISG will take my call and respond quickly. They’re very consistent and they’ve shown great interest in establishing a long-term working relationship with our business.”
If you’d like to talk to someone at ISG Technology, Inc. about how they can help your business improve efficiency and address network issues like these, please feel free to call (877) 334-4474 or visit them online at www.isgtech.com.
As a client service-oriented radiology practice in Missouri, Advanced Radiology was feeling the pain. “Stability and speed are crucial to our ability to provide services to our patients and their physicians,” says James Aldridge, Director of Radiology for the company. “We had reached a point where our existing infrastructure would inhibit our growth unless we invested a significant amount of capital into a dozen new servers, storage devices and software.”
“ISG helped us implement a major network upgrade with virtual servers in a secure underground environment.”
James Aldridge, Director of Radiology, Advanced Radiology
Many businesses serving the healthcare industry are experiencing similar challenges. With new, rapid technological growth mandates, there’s a constant need for providers to upgrade to newer equipment and software. “The cost of equipment and the rate of change can cause not only an increase in capital expense, but a human expense in terms of training and time,” says Matt Jost, ISG account executive. “Technology has become a consuming factor for many healthcare providers, and that can distract from their core business focus.”
To help Advanced Radiology break through their barriers, ISG was able to test and evaluate their systems and propose different scenarios. “ISG’s knowledge and flexibility allowed us to tailor a solution that fit our budget and address each of our unique challenges,” says Aldridge. To start things off, ISG performed a complete network evaluation to determine best practices for the environment, taking the human element into consideration along with power, cooling, physical space and regulatory restrictions.
Based on the results of this evaluation, and the necessary requirements to meet the client’s business goals, ISG proposed two solutions. “One was to build out an internal data center with a virtual infrastructure,” says Jost. “The second was to reduce capital costs by migrating their IT infrastructure toward the ISG Data Center Service.”
“ISG helped us implement a major network upgrade with virtual servers in a secure underground environment, all connected to dual fiber rings, with a solid disaster recovery plan,” says Aldridge. “During this transition, we experienced very little downtime. They were able to simplify our backup process and help tighten our security.”
The results were better than either ISG or Advanced Radiology could have hoped for. In addition to the improved reliability and the elimination of outages, ISG’s Data Center Service has provided the client with additional flexibility for virtual assets. It’s also enabled migrations to new and more productive software solutions, minus the downtime.
“Advanced Radiology has a newfound agility thanks to the ISG Data Center,” says Jost. “They can add users, servers or other virtual assets within minutes,” he says, “and all without making a capital expenditure.”
The client couldn’t agree more. “ISG was able to update us to newer server technology, including both hardware and software,” says Aldridge. “With a newer operating system implementation, we were able to speed up our networks. ISG has been instrumental in our ability to continue our growth and migrate into newer systems.”
Are you interested in learning more about how switching to ISG’s Data Center Services could help your business thrive? Contact your ISG representative today.
Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS) is a K-12 school district in central Oklahoma. OKCPS is comprised of 79 total schools, over 36,000 students and more than 4,400 employees.
Like many large public school systems, OKCPS had various IT challenges. Dozens of sites to network, thousands of endpoints to support and limited IT staff to manage and maintain the sprawling environment. Worries about power consumption, server sprawl and the high travel/maintenance costs of supporting a distributed server environment had increased as well.
OKCPS has an experienced and talented Network Services team but they felt needed a technology partner with deep expertise in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery solutions. OKCPS engaged ISG Technology, a technology solution provider with extensive experience helping clients solve BC/DR challenges.
As a starting point, ISG worked with the Network Services team to perform a detailed Assessment of the OKCPS server, storage and network infrastructure. The Assessment yielded a solution design which would not only solve the DR challenge but consolidate the sprawling OKCPS infrastructure down to working data centers. The two data centers could then be configured to work together in production while providing failover capabilities in the event of a site failure.
The design included virtualization of numerous OKCPS server workloads using VMware ESX on HP C-class Blades. Once virtualized, workloads become “portable,” since virtual machines are not tied to physical hardware.
The design also included a pair of EMC CLARiiON storage arrays teamed with EMC RecoverPoint for bi-directional data replication between the two data centers. Replication assures that if one data center has an outage, data loss, or disaster the other data center can assume full function.
To simplify the recovery process, ISG recommended VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), a DR tool for virtualized environments which leverages EMC replication capabilities to automate the flow of the recovery process. SRM eliminates complex manual recovery steps and minimized the need for human intervention during a disaster — effectively a “push button” DR solution. SRM also provides a non-disruptive testing environment, so the plan can be validated and/or amended as necessary.
The final solution component was for Backup at each site using Data Domain appliances to provide an additional layer of data protection. Data Domain is a tapeless backup solution which provides industry leading data “deduplication” which can dramatically decrease storage capacity requirements and costs.
Implementation of the solution went smoothly, according to Steve Washam, Director of Network Services for OKCPS. “The project went very well. Our team did a great job. Dean Coit (ISG Solution Architect) went above and beyond the call of duty to help us.”
“ISG’s expertise was critical to our success.”
Steve Washam, Director of Network Services for OKCPS
The key result achieved was a robust DR plan which can be tested, amended and validated during business hours without having to take down production systems. The new DR plan also provides detailed test reports which can be provided to auditors upon request.
Another notable benefit of the solution was a significant reduction in power consumption and energy costs. Prior to implementation, OKCPS had reached the capacity limits of the existing power plant. But the virtualized environment reduced power requirements and eliminated the need to invest in a new, larger UPS.
A final benefit resulted from the consolidation and centralization. The bloated travel and maintenance costs of supporting the former distributed environment were all but eliminated in the new solution.
Founded in 1927, The Bama Companies, Inc., is an innovator of wholesome bakery products, such as hand-held pies, biscuits, buns, pie shells, and pizza crust. Bama serves the Quick Service Restaurants, Fast Casual, Casual Dining, and Broadline Channels of the Foodservice Industry for the largest, most well-known restaurant chains on the planet.
Bama had aging PC’s spread across their environment; they were experiencing high support costs, and needed an efficient and cost-effective plan to refresh their PC fleet.
In addition, they wanted to enhance the performance of their user associates Windows desktop environment.
They were also looking for ways to improve process management and deliver secure desktops to their manufacturers and outside the company to employees around the world. Finally, Bama hoped to provide users the same environment across various remote devices.
Eric Spille, Manager of Technical Services for Bama, turned to ISG Technology for assistance with this company-wide project. ISG worked out a program to move the company to Citrix XenDesktop Enterprise so that desktops could be delivered virtually to associates.
ISG conducted an initial pilot with 25 users to provide a proof-of-concept. Based on that success, Spille decided to expand the XenDesktop solution out to all users.
With ISG’s expertise, Bama installed redundant Citrix NetScaler controllers as access brokers to enhance the XenDesktop delivery and significantly improve the user interface. Additionally, Bama’s Exchange environment is secured by the NetScalers, which handle the security and access processes now. The Netscalers keep their data safe.
Bama replaced old desktops with thin clients for an immediate cost savings and a reduction of their total cost of ownership. Refresh cycles were extended from four to eight years, which doubled the lifespan of their hardware—at half the cost.
“What made everything easier for us was the impressive level of Citrix expertise at ISG,” said Spille. “ISG knows Citrix really well. We felt very fortunate to have access to someone of that caliber. I don’t think anyone in this area even comes close.”
User experience was improved. “We can provide our employees with a Windows desktop with 12 seconds of login,” said Spille. “That’s impressive.”
Bama also experienced several incremental benefits. “While our main goal was to put a thin client at everyone’s desk, we always struggled with patches in the past,” said Spille. “This new upgrade allowed us to provide over 300 users with a single image. That’s a huge savings and process improvement for us.”
Thanks to the Netscalers, Bama also experienced an increase in data security. Executives and sales associates who access Bama’s network remotely—regardless of device—are only viewing the data they need, without having data reside on the local device itself. Company data remains safely in the data center.
Bama was impressed with ISG’s commitment to the project. “Having a single point of contact really helped the project run smoothly. Hal Davey was truly an advocate for us. ISG asked the right questions,” said Spille. “This allowed us to proactively avoid issues, and get it right the first time.”
We’ve spent a lot of time on this blog discussing what ISG’s services can do for you, as well as what kinds of specific problems we can fix. We’ve even done an opinion piece here and there about current trends within IT. What we haven’t done so far is explain what kind of a company we are on a more personal level.
As a modern company, it’s really important to us that you not only understand what we do, but who we are. In an effort to fully introduce ourselves to you, we’d like to explain the three guiding principles that drive our company’s innovation each and every day: people, technology and service.
“People come first.”
When it comes to business, even the business of technology and machines, people come first. When we’re considering initiating a business relationship with a company, the first thing we do is try to fully understand the people who work there.
The reason we do this is simple: We can’t figure out how to fix your problem if we don’t know anything about who you are and what you need from us.
For the average managed services provider, solving an issue starts with what the MSP can do to fix the problem, followed by how the company is specifically going to solve it and finally finishing with why that particular situation was a problem in the first place. While this gets the job done most of the time, we at ISG think these companies have it backwards.
We begin our problem analysis by first figuring out why this obstacle is in your way. Starting here works better because it allows us to fully understand all aspects of your particular situation, without coming in with any preconceived notions. After this, we begin to work on how we’re going to fix the problem, followed by a full and detailed investigation into what the actual problem is.
What this means is that you can rest assured ISG will solve the problem you’re actually having, and not the one you think you’re experiencing. While you may think you need simple malware removal – something ISG could easily provide for you – it may turn out that you actually need comprehensive firewall protection services. By figuring out why a situation is a problem for you first, we can diagnose the root cause of your dilemma and provide a solution based on your company’s specific needs.
Technology is evolving at a truly remarkable rate. The Pew Research Center found that in 2015, about 68 percent of American adults owned a smartphone. In 2011, that number was closer to 35 percent. In four short years, smartphone usage had almost doubled, showing how fully technology has been integrated into our everyday lives.
Technology is everywhere, and with around 84 percent of your American clients identifying as Internet users, being on the forefront of this revolution is absolutely vital to stay profitable. That being said, keeping up with the latest and greatest in technological innovation is extremely hard when you’re trying to run a business.
To anyone working outside of IT, something like server virtualization can sound like magic. Just wrapping your head around the concept of fitting multiple, virtual machines on a single server can be impossible if you don’t understand the finely tuned technology behind it.
Thankfully, our team of highly trained tech wizards can make this magically complex technology simple and easy to comprehend. With ISG, you can rest assured that you’re getting the technology your business needs, from experts who truly understand it.
Our tech wizards can help bring the magic of modern technology to your business.Although you obviously want a cursory understanding of the technology you’re investing in, we know that you want IT solutions to just work. You don’t want your business goals to be hampered by constantly having to figure out what’s going wrong with the services provided to you, and as such, ISG has always been focused on providing a quality service to all of our clients.
Whether it’s disaster recovery services, or even online backup of your mission-critical data, we value giving the businesses we work with the best product we can. Investing in ISG is investing in consistency, and nothing is more important to us than making sure your IT problems get solved as efficiently and as effectively as possible.
If you’d like to learn how ISG can help bring your business to the next level, make sure to check out the list of managed services we offer on our homepage.
If you ask tech-industry experts what they think has been the most disruptive technology of the last couple of years, you’ll get a few different answers. Some will say cloud computing, and others will say virtual infrastructure. Quite a few, however, will simply say one word: mobile. Smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and the Internet of Things are all examples of mobile technologies that have changed the way enterprises, medium-sized companies and small outfits alike operate within the business world. Recent numbers from The Pew Research Center indicated that 68 percent of American adults own a smartphone, and that statistic is only going to increase as 2016 progresses. It seems that everything we do is now tied up in mobile or has a mobile component – including everything in the business world.
Why is mobile so important to the way we do business now? Let’s take a look at how this disruptive technology has had such an irreversible influence on how companies approach their IT infrastructure:
Computing on the go has never been more important for our fast-paced society. Research is being done every day exploring the efficacy of these kinds of tools for consumers and companies alike. For instance, according to a new study from research firm Sequence, consumers are using their devices to make wish lists and spend time with family this holiday season. If given the chance, the study found, one-third of them would use the time saved by mobile shopping to stay in bed longer.
This is a fun example of how mobile tech has changed the way we look at things, but enterprises and SMBs are also benefiting more from devices like laptops and smartphones. Business can be conducted on the fly thanks to these kinds of devices – leading to an increase in productivity and improved outcomes throughout the business world. Bring-your-own-device policies are helping companies save money in overhead and operational expenses while at the same time giving employees the means to be more productive and more efficient.
Myriad kinds of mobile devices can be used to impact office productivity.As mobile devices have evolved to meet the growing needs of enterprises in every industry, so too has the technological landscape developed in order to accommodate their increasing use. BYOD is even one of the driving forces behind the endpoint security market, according to a recent report published by MarketsandMarkets. The endpoint security market is projected to be worth $17.4 billion by 2020, growing at a compound annual rate of 8.4 percent over the next five years.
This market is growing proportionately with the number of malware samples discovered every day by security teams around the world. Motive Security Labs found that 16 million mobile devices were targeted by malware in 2014. To negate these kinds of threats, it’s crucial for companies to make – and stick to – a BYOD security strategy.
This strengthening of the security space is a clear indication that the need to mitigate risks has been compounded by the introduction of mobile technologies into the workplace. When unknown employee devices are connected to the network, it can sometimes cause headaches for the IT department in the form of shadow IT. Networks sometimes aren’t prepared for the intrusion of different kinds of tech, which means there may be hidden vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited.
“Improvements in terms of productivity, efficiency and expense-cutting are well worth the risks.”
However risky it may be to allow mobile tech on your network, the benefits can outweigh the disadvantages if you play your cards right. Shadow IT has gotten a bad rap (understandably) in recent years, but improvements in terms of productivity, efficiency and expense-cutting are well worth the risks. In addition, according to CMS Wire contributor Joanna Schloss, shadow IT can lead to the adoption of new technologies that work hand-in-hand with mobile tech. This in turn helps companies see better return on investment from these tools.
Navigating the ever-changing mobile tech landscape can seem daunting when you undertake this task by yourself. Partnering with a managed services provider like ISG Technology gives you access to trained professionals who know what they’re talking about when it comes to new devices and how to best use them to your advantage. We can also help you determine the best course of action in terms of increasing your security protocols and taking charge of your computing infrastructure.
Contact the experts at ISG Technology today for more information!
As companies grow and mature, their IT infrastructure needs to evolve with them. This includes capabilities surrounding mobile app development and operations workflows. More enterprise technology begins to revolve around mobile devices, and making sure your company is on top of the game and surmounting the challenges of mobile app development is going to be hugely important.
Demand for mobile apps is increasing at an astonishing rate. According to IT research firm Gartner, there will be 2.1 billion mobile phones sold by 2019. As a result, by the end of 2017, this demand will be growing at least five times faster than IT can deliver.
Here are a few tips on how to deal with app development challenges within your organization:
Any development project should have concrete goals. The first step in any successful initiative is to ensure that there is a particular end in mind before you get started. It could help to ask certain kinds of questions:
By first establishing end goals of the app development aspect of your organization’s IT infrastructure, it greatly increases the chance for success.
It’s important to first develop goals as far as your mobile IT strategy.Mobile Enterprise contributor Sravish Sridhar noted in March 2015 that 63 percent of enterprise CIOs are going to consider deploying mobile projects in the cloud. With the inherent cost savings, scalability and flexibility that cloud environments offer, deploying and developing applications in the cloud can take a lot of headache away from IT endeavors.
“Leveraging the cloud during app development can be beneficial during prototyping or parallel branch development,” Sridhar noted
“Demand for mobile app development is increasing at an astonishing rate.”
One of the basic tenets of agile app development and DevOps methodologies is the idea of continuous integration and delivery. According to IBM, the pressure on development teams to push apps to market as quickly as possible has generated a need for agile development methods that integrate the steps of planning, development, testing and delivery into one continuous process – instead of conducting each step linearly. You should utilize these techniques to make it easier to create and deploy applications.
Contact the managed services experts at ISG Technology for more information about how we can help you with your app development operations – whether that means pairing you with the right cloud deployment or helping you consolidate your infrastructure. Our application support teams are here to assist you in any way they can.
Maintaining computing infrastructure is one of the most important parts of owning and operating a company. Without technology, organizations wouldn’t be as productive and wouldn’t be able to conduct business in the same way – so in order to utilize your IT infrastructure to its fullest potential, you have to make sure it’s optimized and ready for whatever you throw at it.
Let’s take a look at some of the best benefits of prioritizing your IT portfolio and giving your organization the best tools possible:
Investing in technology solutions that will help your company provide better service and create better products should always be at the top of any “to-do” list for the IT department. Incorporating tools like client relations management software and enterprise resource planning into your cloud environments can offer your company a chance at higher revenue and better client engagement, according to Demand Media’s Alexis Writing. Your IT infrastructure needs to be at peak performance if you’re going to get everything you can out of your CRM solutions.
“Businesses need to maintain clear visibility into their entire IT environments.”
Virtualized and cloud infrastructure tools both offer benefits that would allow a business to practice better data management and, in the long run, more effectively and efficiently meet client needs. Together, they add complexity to your computing environment, which can sometimes equal slowdowns. According to eWeek contributor Chris Preimesberger, businesses need to maintain clear visibility into their entire environments if optimization is to occur – meaning it’s crucial for the IT infrastructure to be as transparent as possible. When IT managers can have a holistic view of their computing equipment, it becomes easier to practice business agility.
Making sure your technology solutions are all on the same page also contributes to hefty increases in productivity. There are several kinds of solutions tailored to this kind of function, and one of them would be unified communications technology. UC incorporates multiple forms of communications – unified messaging, email, phone, etc. – into one solution, making it easier to disseminate information across an entire organization.
Recent projections from the researchers at MarketsandMarkets indicated that the unified-communications-as-a-service market will be worth a total of $24.88 billion by 2020, demonstrating the clear demand for these types of solutions. Implementing UC across your company not only helps you stay abreast of what’s going on – it can also boost productivity across the board as employees have the ability to work from home or on the go.
When it comes to physical infrastructure within the data center, making sure it works for you is crucial. That includes giving your servers a tuneup every once in a while and investing in data center technologies like cooling and monitoring solutions that keep an eye on your equipment so you don’t have to.
Part of optimizing server functionalities also includes investing time and money to make sure you’re energy efficient. A recent Anthesis Group study found that nearly 30 percent of servers worldwide are comatose – in other words, they are sitting in data centers around the globe, sucking up energy but not doing any real computing. Taking those servers and consolidating them in order to get more out of virtualization and the cloud is one way to optimize and strategize in the IT department, according to Data Center Knowledge. When less energy is taken up by servers, your business can be more efficient and save money in the long run.
Consolidating servers can lead to energy efficiency and distinct cost savings.Investing in networking solutions can increase the functionality of your data center and enhance computing power – an important step to take when you want to more quickly complete tasks and balance workloads. TechTarget noted that network function virtualization, for instance, has the ability to decrease the amount of necessary network hardware and thus decrease complexity across the board. This contributes to improved business processes and, eventually, better bottom lines.
When it comes to investing in and maintaining an efficient, effective computing portfolio, it helps to have a team of experts on hand. Contact the managed services professionals at ISG Technology today for more information about how having an optimized IT infrastructure can improve your business functions and make sure you’re keeping up with – and exceeding – the competition.
