Logicalis - Internal Managed Services
Logicalis takes advantage of the same quality service it offers its clients to support its own corporate IT department.Logicalis IT Director Terry Strohecker knows a good idea when he sees one. He knows, for example, that Logicalis customers have realized a high rate of return on Managed Services from Logicalis. He knows their IT Directors are freed from putting out operational brushfires and are able to concentrate their energies more proactively on supporting the business needs of their organizations. They're not getting called at home at 2 am because a disk is full or a PC won't boot. He knows this because Logicalis corporate IT is a client of Logicalis Managed Services.
With the time Strohecker's peers don't have to spend on 24x7, hands-on management, his counterparts at those Logicalis customers who use Logicalis Managed Services are able to implement new applications that drive productivity gains directly to the bottom line. Time to market for new lines of business is dramatically reduced because clients of Logicalis Managed Services don't have to build the IT infrastructure to support it. Logicalis has already done that.
Nor are clients of Logicalis Managed Services spending sleepless nights worrying about the security of their data. They know Managed Services provides seven points of protection for maximum defense against intruders and viruses that could threaten their IT environments.
Ever vigilant
They're not recruiting, hiring and training network engineers to monitor their IP Telephony or their network infrastructure because they know that Logicalis already has the best network engineers working on their behalf.
Their applications are managed; their servers are backed up; their networks are optimized. And, they know without a doubt that if there is anything about the function of their IT architecture that they do need to know that Logicalis' ever vigilant reporting and alarm notification procedures will have a full report on their desktops instantly.
For an IT Director under constant pressure to provide reliable, secure technology and be able to show ROI at the drop of a hat, Strohecker knows from experience that, "Managed Services from Logicalis is as good as it gets."
In the case of Logicalis' IT, Managed Services provides round-the-clock monitoring of its email, storage, application and printing environments. Because Logicalis is a distributed organization, special care is required around for security and network access to the company's wide area network which encompasses six major acquisitions in the past five years, spanning 30 branch offices across the U.S. operating in four different time zones.
Interactive and flexible
Having corporate IT as a client also has some distinct advantages for the Logicalis Managed Services team. "We treat corporate IT the same way we treat any other customer," says Kevin Clark, Logicalis Business Manager for Managed Services. "And they are the best kind of customer to have," he adds. "They really keep us on our toes, and that, in turn, helps us improve the service we offer to our other customers."
Logicalis opened its Enterprise Business Operations Center (EBOC) and began offering Managed Services on September 1, 2000. Managed Services made so much sense to Logicalis' customers that a greatly expanded, second generation EBOC was opened in Mason, OH in May 2005.
Managed Services has a long track record inside Logicalis. "The Logicalis website was the first thing we hosted. Then the email infrastructure, which we co-managed with the IT group. Our model is to augment a customer's IT staff," Clark adds. "We try to be very interactive and flexible. The customer can decide how much they want us to do, or how little."
Strohecker particularly likes the flexibility that Managed Services is able to offer. "We want the same things that our customers want," Strohecker adds. "There is a critical area between typical straightforward day-to-day operations and those tasks associated with business processes and the idiosyncrasies of the non-technical side of our organization. We're constantly looking for the perfect balance–what to keep and what to delegate to Managed Services."
Because he is both an employee of Logicalis and a client, while Strohecker refines the way he uses Managed Services, he is also helping refine Managed Services. "It's a learning process for both of us," he says. "What we learn helps us, but it also helps Managed Services."
Besides supporting corporate IT, Logicalis also uses its Managed Services capabilities to provide a bulletproof platform for the development of new technology solutions. Logicalis Vice President, National Infrastructure Consulting, Eric Linxweiler, for example, used the Logicalis EBOC to develop an email archiving solution that was rolled out internally in March 2006. The services required to adequately support email archiving will become part of the portfolio of capabilities that Managed Services offers Logicalis' customers.
OpenView
One of the resources that both Logicalis and its Managed Services clients share is the power of HP's OpenView management system. The oldest and most comprehensive management suite of tools, OpenView makes it possible for Managed Services to keep all the systems under its care running at optimum levels. "Among its other virtues, OpenView allows you to do trend analysis, which gives you the ability to plan for the future based on real data," says Clark. "That's what efficient IT management is all about: being able to take a look 90 days back, compare it to where you are today and then look 90 days ahead and be able to make informed decisions about memory, disk space, CPUs, all the components of your IT system. Having that kind of data available drives efficiency and high availability and performance," he adds.
In the process of using OpenView for Logicalis and its clients, the Managed Services team has developed a very high level of proficiency. "We don't have the code," Clark says, "but we know how it works and what it needs to do." His team frequently interacts with OpenView developers at HP and has contributed to some refinements in the OpenView code, especially in the area of reporting.
Managed Services also contributes to the Logicalis OpenView sales effort led by Norm Daniels, Logicalis Director Enterprise Management Integrated Solutions Group. Daniels' team designs and deploys OpenView enterprise systems at client sites. Not only is the Managed Services EBOC in Cincinnati a great place to bring a prospective client for a demo of an OpenView implementation, but the experience the Managed Services team has gained in using OpenView for more than six years is a resource that benefits all Logicalis OpenView clients.
"They don't have to go through the growing pains we've gone through," Clark says. "It's a two-way street," he adds. Daniels and his team are constantly keeping Managed Services up to date on the latest OpenView improvements. "We may compete for some customers, but we're all on the same team."
