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The Background
Bean, Kinney & Korman, P.C., celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009, and is a widely recognized independent law firm in Northern Virginia. With 40 lawyers and a comprehensive array of practice areas, the firm works on some of the most sophisticated legal matters throughout the region. While continually growing and diversifying to meet the complex legal needs of its expanding community of clients, Bean Kinney remains committed to the fundamental values integral to their practice philosophy: experience, versatility, dedication to service, flexibility and efficiency.
The Challenge
Terry Lamb is Manager of Information Systems for Bean, Kinney & Korman. Prior to her arrival at Bean Kinney, the firm relied solely on contract help for its IT needs. While the company was growing fast, as a small business they sought to contain costs and staffing needs. Among the firm’s several servers was an older one scheduled for replacement later in the year. The server required close monitoring for the low disc space alerts for its operating system volume.
Lamb needed to relieve her and her contractors of some of the workload required to monitor system, application and performance logs on all the servers. She realized it was more economical to hire a service provider rather than a contractor, particularly as a single contractor may not be available to respond 24/7. With an aging server and the potential for remote employees working at all hours, Bean Kinney needed someone local who could provide remote monitoring and remediation designed to ensure the highest standard of systems availability to meet its business needs.
The Solution
Bean Kinney has a long relationship with Nortec based on respect and trust developed over the years. Explains Lamb, “We considered a couple of other companies and found Nortec’s fees to be competitive. Based on our past good experiences with them, it made sense to take advantage of Nortec’s Remote Monitoring and Management offering.”
During initial consultation, Nortec and Lamb determined the levels of service and remediation that Bean Kinney needed as well as the points of contact for alerts. Nortec established a remote connection to Bean Kinney’s network, installed a small piece of software on a utility server and began monitoring designated servers Nortec provides a web interface that allows Lamb to view ticket requests for remediation, to see their resolution as well as various reports. Nortec provided Lamb with phone numbers and points of contact for 24/7 phone support. The business is constantly connected to Nortec’s professional team and if needed, Nortec provides technicians to remediate any issues that may arise.
By taking advantage of Nortec’s On-Site Professional Services and Remote Monitoring and Management services, Lamb is assured of getting timely alerts to critical issues as well as having access to expert resources for addressing them. Lamb is now able to focus her in-house resources more efficiently, make more effective use her budget, and stay on track with plans for upgrades and growth.
Benefits
Nortec has “Given our information systems a whole new level of stability,” says Lamb, “provided an effective means to keep our systems up and running a higher percentage of time, and improved my ability to schedule maintenance down time well in advance.” She further explains that on one occasion while she was out of town when she received a phone call from the NOC at 11:30 p.m. reporting that the NOC had lost connection with Bean could be resolved well before the start of the business day. Had it not been for Nortec’s 24/7 service, the outage would have been reported much later, taken much longer to remediate, and could have caused a significant disruption of business.
In addition to dramatically reducing network down time inherent to managing small business networks, Remote Monitoring and Remediation also supports growth and expansion. Nortec recently installed a virtualized solution to upgrade several existing servers, expand file storage capacity and add new application servers. Lamb says she only had to send a short email to Nortec indicating she was ready for the monitoring service to be shifted to the new servers. She rests assured that she will receive timely alerts and expert remediation essential to meet her goal of 99.9% network uptime.
The Remote Monitoring and Remediation service from Nortec provides real value to the firm by dramatically minimizing business disruptions due to technical problems, lengthening the cycle of replacements and upgrades, ongoing support essential to successful expansion and growth of business. Nortec has made Bean Kinney’s systems more stable, reliable and ready to handle the next phase of growth, thus allowing the firm to continue its dedication to service and efficiency so that Bean, Kinney & Korman, P.C can keep “Getting It Done”.
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