Doceo performed an IT Assessment for a York, PA based Law Firm. The firm was at high risk of cybersecurity attacks, significant downtime and data loss. Doceo was able to enhance their previous IT investment at a significant savings in hardware and software costs.

Assessment & Discovery

Key findings included:

• There were three hardware servers in place of various ages with no hardware warranties. Two of the three were running unsupported operating systems.
• Of twenty five workstations, eight were running Windows 7 and had not received security updates for almost a year.
• The Law Firm had recently been the victim of a ransomware attack and all files were encrypted. At the time of the ransomware attack, there were no complete server backups in place. This resulted in a sizable loss of proprietary data.
• Domain policies across the organization were putting the firm at risk.

In summary, while this organization’s IT provider had good intentions, they were not taking a consultative approach to IT Infrastructure. Best practices in managing the relationship would have advised the partners in the firm that their infrastructure was inadequate in terms of security and left the organization at risk. Running obsolete and unprotected servers was a significant risk of down-time should a server experience a failure. In a legal practice, having key line of business applications down for an extended period of time has the potential to interrupt the ability to provide service, and interrupt revenue for the practice.

In short, the incumbent IT vendor was not coaching the firm to invest cost-effectively yet adequately in their IT infrastructure, and a high price was paid for this oversight.

Solution

Based on the findings above, Doceo made several key recommendations for upgrades to the key components of their IT infrastructure.

The newest physical server is being upgraded with the following:

• Data drives are being upgraded to Solid State Drives, the RAID reconfigured, and a hot-swappable backup drive will be in place. Should a drive failure occur in the future, corrective action can begin automatically within minutes.
• Server memory is being upgraded with an additional 32Gb of RAM.
• The obsolete physical servers will be migrated into a Hyper-V, virtualized environment on the newly upgraded server.
• The server warranty was upgraded to provide an additional three years of coverage with Mission Critical 24 x 7 coverage with guaranteed 4-hour onsite response.

Other solutions included:

• A Dell SonicWall firewall solution is being implemented with three years of Enhanced Security and support.
• The remaining eight Windows 7 workstations are being replaced with new Dell Windows 10 Pro workstations. All new workstations will include SSDs, additional RAM, and covered with three-year on-site warranties.
• The ongoing management of the IT infrastructure has transitioned from an ala carte program to an all-inclusive, proactive Managed Services program at a savings over the historic average expenditure.
• The up-front expenses for this project were unplanned, so Doceo was able to provide aggressive financing that packaged the entire project as a monthly expense.

Ongoing

Managing technology is an ongoing process and requires time and discipline. Doceo provides virtual Chief Information Officer (CIO) services to all our IT customers. We engage with them on a regular basis, on their timeline, to develop a technology roadmap and assist in their long-range planning process. This ensures that the technology in place is properly designed and scaled to meet the business goals of the organization today, and in the future.

Long range planning can introduce many variables that require consulting with an organization’s technology services provider to identify the technology related impacts of change.

These variables include the following:

• Headcount Growth
• New Locations (especially if the current organization is a single-location organization)
• Moving premise-based applications to cloud-based – an increasingly common occurrence.
• Mergers and acquisitions, which often require data conversions and management of third-party vendors.

Conclusion

A Technology Partnership should not be a one time, “set-it and forget-it” experience. Businesses are facing constant change in their
respective competitive landscapes that require focusing their full attention on their business. They do not have time to worry about whether they are being taken advantage of by their IT provider. Instead, they need a partner with a business-focused approach to technology.

Doceo’s approach to the Technology Partnership is rooted in this methodology. We are not buried in the “nuts and bolts” of technology and all of the associated buzzwords that proliferate in the marketplace today. Technology is just a tool that can be used, or mis-used, to execute an organizations business plan. We are among the best at coming alongside a business partner to understand what they are trying to achieve, where their goals are focused and what needs to be done to get them there. That is the Doceo Difference.