"We previously handled our IT internally, but we were lacking consistency across the whole company, including end-user property-level hardware support, corporate network infrastructure configuration, and property-level network administration, just to name a few. It's very challenging to take care of the daily tasks within an allotted budget and still provide a higher quality of service from an IT perspective. Our property-level users are demanding, and rightfully so, of consistent, concise, and timely support from the IT team.

Working with IronEdge has been my first experience outsourcing our IT support desk, and we're very happy we did. We take pride in our ability to support our field staff effectively by monitoring and measuring metrics, and the IronEdge team helps us maintain our support Service Level Agreements with our end-user community.

Originally, our goal was to only outsource our desktop support for the 38 student housing properties we manage. A few weeks after we began working with IronEdge, we lost our senior networking engineer and decided this was the perfect opportunity to outsource in a bigger way. We changed the scope of the project from just property-level support to desktop and server infrastructure support for our corporate office as well.

This type of endeavor would normally require a 90-120 day period with due diligence and ample review time to make sure things are done properly and that all bases are covered. We basically had 3 weeks to tackle the large transition and IronEdge pulled it off seamlessly. Without their assistance, we could not have done this. Saying it's a monumental effort doesn't even begin to describe everything the IronEdge team did to make this happen! We did not experience a single hiccup or disruption whatsoever.

In addition to undertaking the outsourcing project, we also employed IronEdge to complete our VPN decoupling at all communities and move our server farm from our corporate offices to a secure, remote collocation facility in downtown Atlanta. We also came right in behind those two projects with a complete move of our corporate office from Buckhead to Clairmont Road in Atlanta. I am happy to report that the efforts of IronEdge and our internal IT team allowed us to complete these projects on time, under budget, and without a single disruption in business continuity. We have been incredibly pleased with all of our interaction with the IronEdge team.

In addition to our department and company being much more effective. I found that costs were not being properly allocated to the correct departments - IT was absorbing all of the dollars for support, hardware and more. By outsourcing, we were able to get a handle on where the expenses are really incurred and push the appropriate costs out to the properties. To say that IronEdge's help through this transition has been amazing is truly an understatement. We absolutely have been successful as a result of our teamwork with IronEdge."

Ken Miller
CIO, Peak Campus Companies

ManagedIRON Case Study: Peak Campus Companies

Background

Peak Campus, a privately-held real estate company focusing on student housing, was restructuring their overall infrastructure and lost some of their IT support staff during the transition. They needed experienced technicians to quickly step in and provide front-end help desk support to their 38 student housing properties across the country. Shortly after the transition, their Senior Networking Engineer left the company and the internal IT department was no longer operating efficiently. Peak Campus felt that their overall network infrastructure was lacking in consistency and that they needed a highly-trained, reliable IT staff. They decided it was time to outsource all of their information technology in a big way.

The scope of the original project changed drastically when IronEdge was asked to not only provide the front-end help desk support for their properties, but also desktop support for their corporate office, desktop support for the computer labs on every property (8-12 PCs each), as well as back-end server support. A project of this magnitude would normally require a 90-120 day transition period, but IronEdge seamlessly accomplished the transition in a fraction of that time.

Key Project Components

• Reliable Help Desk Support - IronEdge transitioned the help desk support from Peak Campus's internal IT department to the IronEdge support team within a one-week period. This process also included thoroughly reviewing and validating Peak's internal documentation.


• Proactive Security Measures - The vast majority of the computers at Peak Campus's properties had not received regular patches or critical security updates. The IronEdge team addressed the issues by implementing web content filtering, antivirus and proactive patch management procedures.


• Extraordinarily Quick Implementation - The process of on-boarding all of Peak Campus's locations included the staff's PCs and computer lab PCs at each property. With 40 corporate employee workstations added to the ManagedIRON support, the project included over 400 computers in 39 locations across the country. The normal required timeline for this size of project is between 90 and 120 days, but due to Peak Campus's tight turnaround requirements, IronEdge was able to complete the transition in less than 30 days.


• Improved Server Infrastructure - Once Peak Campus was onboard with ManagedIRON, the IronEdge team finalized open projects and resolved issues with the server infrastructure to ensure it was operating at optimal efficiency and reliability.


• Increase in Internal IT Productivity - Much like many organizations, Peak Campus's full time IT staff was putting out fires and handling network troubleshooting, break-fix issues and server-related issues. Once Peak outsourced their IT support, IronEdge deployed team members to Peak's properties and corporate office to oversee the quick transition and train users. Now, with all of the day-to-day support and maintenance in IronEdge's court, Peak Campus's IT associates are free to handle bigger projects in business line applications.

Proven Solutions

Peak Campus now has reliable and proactive support for their corporate PCs, field PCs and their server infrastructure. Help desk support is much more accessible for the Peak Campus staff and issues are resolved within a couple of hours as opposed to several days or even weeks. Peak's overall IT costs are reduced because IronEdge can deploy new properties and provide full support for much less than they were spending previously. Additionally, Peak Campus's IT costs were not being allocated to the correct departments before - IT was absorbing much of the costs for support and hardware. By outsourcing to IronEdge, Peak Campus has been able to track expenses more effectively, which has enabled them to accurately allocate costs to the properties.

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