The Bama Companies See Value In Virtualized Desktops
Industry: Hospitality
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.
Challenge
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.
Solution
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.
Results
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.”
Hosted Voice Enables Mobility For Legasus Group, LC
Industry: Business Management
Legasus Group, LC is an advisory firm that works with families in business to perpetuate and sustain family enterprises. Smoothing transitions from generation to generation, Legasus Group advisors integrate relational and managerial sciences within a living systems model to better utilize the potential and talents of all stakeholders.
Challenge
Since Legasus Group teams frequently travel to their client sites, they require a mobility solution that helps them access their records and files on the road. Previously they had used a local IT service provider and another provider for internet and voice, creating difficulties with maintaining a high level of quality of service.
“There was a lot of finger pointing,” said Matt Kuzma, Chief Operating Officer at Legasus Group. “We had a hard time resolving issues through to completion, because no one was taking responsibility.”
Solution
Legasus Group became familiar with ISG Technology after attending an overview of ISG Hosted Voice and bandwidth offerings, which they felt was a good fit with their strategic goals. They put out a bid for distributed access, so that their team could work remotely with the same experience as if they were in the office. Legasus Group detailed required business outcomes, and asked bidders to submit their best recommendation.
“We decided to pursue the relationship with ISG. It was very intriguing to have a single service provider that could address all our service needs,” said Kuzma. “Their Hosted Voice solution gave us powerful features that help our team accomplish their work and remain in touch while traveling.”
ISG delivered bandwidth connectivity, a new server, and rolled out their business class Hosted Voice solution. This was accomplished in a one-month transition timeframe.
Results
Kuzma set an aggressive cutover goal at first, and worked with ISG to put the planning in place. The team worked back and forth to give enough time to get the server up and rolling and all relevant permissions migrated to the cloud. “I wasn’t expecting a magic wand. The ISG team worked to find resolution for a few issues that cropped up. They diagnosed the root problem to find a quick resolution,” said Kuzma.
Getting Hosted Voice implemented went smoothly, and all the phones were swapped out at once.
“When we have technical problems, we call or email the issue to their Support Center and ISG will diagnose to fix the issue. They send a complete ticket with all the details documented, and the techs are knowledgeable and courteous,” said Kuzma.
“We have a hybrid model accounting software that is server based, and our response times have increased since the move. Best of all, ISG has lifted the burden of managing the server off of our plate.”
The Client’s View
“ISG listened closely up front to understand our needs, and then delivered a partnership solution that makes the most sense for Legasus Group. With continued support from ISG Hosted Voice, our team can get their jobs done while they are on the road.”
Matt Kuzma
Chief Operating Officer
Legasus Group