The Client
The client is one of the most respected managers and owners of commercial and multifamily real estate in the Midwest. The company excels at recognizing value-add management and exceptional investment opportunities and realizing their potential. Employing strategic renovations, top-tier management, and innovative branding and marketing initiatives, lead our client to consistently outstanding results for third-party property owners and other investors.
The Challenge
The Client manages dozens of residential and commercial properties throughout the Midwest region. Every property typically has a business center or a network, and staff using computers on the network to process rental applications and perform other work. There is also a corporate office that houses administrative, sales and executive staff. The corporate office was set up with a server, and the Client hired an outside IT support firm to manage their infrastructure. Email was hosted by a 3rdparty vendor. When issues arose, the IT support vendor had to provide either onsite or remote support, and coordinate with third parties. In cases of computer or network problems at remote sites, support was often limited, and slow. Onsite support at remote sites was not available. Further, the Client experienced various outages due to aging and improperly managed hardware. In addition, the Director of Administration was the point of contact for all support requests, and spent a lot of her time coordinating support.
Because the Client’s business is distributed geographically, managing the IT assets and maintaining consistency across networks was also a challenge. Employees had various software version installed across a number of different devices. Gaining access to the network from outside also required several steps, and logging in from mobile devices was not supported.
The Solution
The Client chose StratusPointIT’s ITAnyWhere Cloud to solve these and other challenges. Our team performed a thorough audit of the existing infrastructure, and created a redundant, scalable architecture powered by Citrix XenApp. StratusPointIT’s worked with the Client to pilot and then performed a phased, 0-downtime migration to ITAnyWhere Cloud.
The Results
Once the migration was complete, most challenges were resolved quickly. Employees now had a standard computing environment, with the same version of the line of business applications. Users can access support and applications using a single portal, 24/7, from any location or device. All of the critical data is secured, and backed up multiple times per day and restoration can be done within minutes. Because StratusPointIT works on premise and in the cloud, covering the full computing stack, from network to workstations, getting support has become much easier and faster. When the Client needed to move offices, one of StratusPointIT’s local technicians was dispatched onsite to assist with the move.
Additionally, after the migration, Director of Administration had more time to focus on her core job. While she maintains her role as the primary contact for StratusPointIT, more of her time is devoted to providing value for the Client.
