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."