Accurate Full-Network Assessment Allows VAR To Land Client

When Mark Street, owner of CarGo West, called Darren Boyer, president of solutions provider PC|IT, Street was already working with an IT services company. But, he had a computer performance issue, even after trying the solution his existing IT partner had recommended. So, Street challenged PC|IT to discover what was at the root of his network problem and then develop a solution — and potentially win his business.

“CarGo West [a specialized courier service with 15 vehicles] was having random network performance issues, and it wasn’t clear what the problem was,” explains Boyer. For example, the staff at CarGo West would be using the company’s QuickBooks application and suddenly encounter a network slowdown that brought productivity to a halt. At other times, when vehicle drivers out on delivery routes were connecting to the business’ server via VPN (virtual private network), the network would again slow to a crawl, which held up scheduling and deliveries. Yet, other applications and Internet access were rarely affected. “The prior provider had recommended putting in more RAM, which CarGo West did, but that solution didn’t do anything to help the situation,” explains Boyer. “The company didn’t want to keep throwing costly solutions at the problem and hoping it happened upon the right one by chance.”

Boyer says that, from a troubleshooting point of view, it was an interesting problem. To resolve the issue, PC|IT installed the remote monitoring and management tool it uses for managed services purposes, itControlSuite, which examined each area of the network, reporting both in real time and generating detailed reports that enabled PC|IT to pinpoint the biggest problems with the network and then propose a solution. “The itControlSuite product allowed us to plug in one appliance, and within 24 hours we had a pretty good snapshot of that entire network through that appliance as opposed to having our technicians manually follow actions through the network,” explains Boyer. In addition, the appliance stores all the data it finds as it explores and catalogues the network. Within two business days, the solutions provider knew exactly what the problem was, and after only 3 to 4 hours of staff time spent combing through the data in the final reports. “Without this product, it could have easily taken us several more days, at least an additional 20 hours of labor,” says Boyer. He included much of the data in those reports as part of his proposal and used the information to help explain to Street that the issue was caused by the read/write performance of the hard drives on the server.

Server Deployment Project Evolves Into Services Contract
To remediate that problem, PC|IT moved the company’s database to a dedicated server, therefore isolating that heavy traffic from the rest of the network. PC|IT installed an IBM x3500 server with SAS (serial-attached SCSI [small computer system interface]) 15,000 rpm hard drives in a RAID 5 (redundant array of independent disks) at the cost of about $10,000.

Since then, the itControlSuite appliance has helped PC|IT identify expired antivirus licenses on the CarGo West network, as well as upgrade its backup processes. PC|IT also configured the remote access feature on the itControlSuite product for a supervisor, which increased the speed and simplicity of her remote connection well beyond the former VPN connection. Lastly, PC|IT now provides managed 24/7 service for CarGo West, again using the itControlSuite product to handle remote monitoring and management of the network.

While this was one of the first times that PC|IT used itControlSuite to sniff out a particular network problem, Boyer says he has used it again. He says one of the biggest advantages of the product is its “plug and play” capability; it takes only about 30 minutes to deploy on a network and doesn’t disrupt the client’s network while it runs.
www.pcit.com,  www.itcontrolsuite.com