i.t.NOW routinely consults with small businesses on their technology solutions. This week we did a deeper dive with a local company to look at all things IT. The results illustrate how regular IT strategy reviews can impact your overall IT experience, and the budget.
Background
This business had been working with a competitor of ours for several years. Their support model is structured where you essentially have one assigned technician that visits you once a week and manages the network. At the beginning of their relationship things were good. Their assigned technician was sharp and worked to solve their problems.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way. After some time, the tech that they liked got promoted. The tech that replaced him was not nearly as sharp. To make things more difficult the original tech left little to no notes and didn’t get to train his replacement.
The service level dropped sharply as a result. The customer started having problems that just weren’t getting resolved. After a few months their technician left, and they were assigned another. Again, no documentation and no training for the new guy.
This tech was then asked to move their servers to the cloud. After significant struggle and repeated downtimes, he managed to do so. There were some things on the network that didn’t quite make sense to him, but he pushed ahead and finished the cloud migration.
Since then, the client has had problems across the network. If one location goes down, several go down. Print jobs struggle to get where they are sent. Other strange glitches appear and start to bug the client. After suffering like this for a long time, they decide it’s finally time to make a change.
Discovery
After meeting with this business and discussing some of the issue they were having on their network we decided we needed to dig in an understand a little more. We scheduled an assessment of their network. What we found left us scratching our heads for a minute.
The client was set up with their main production servers on Microsoft Azure. However, there was an MPLS circuit that delivered connectivity and internet to several of the sites. All traffic from their locations routed over that MPLS circuit back through the main office and then out to the Azure servers. That meant that if there was any disruption in service in the main office, all offices would be offline and lose connectivity to their main production servers.
The whole point of a solution like Azure cloud is that it is made to be available from anywhere. It’s a solution that has significant redundancy and carries a 99.9% uptime guarantee. By routing all Azure traffic through their main site, they were negating one of the main selling points of the cloud, introducing additional downtime, and creating problems for connectivity and printing.
Cost
We dug in one step further with this client and looked at their overall strategy and spending for telecom. What we found again baffled us.
The strange MPLS routing on their network that was causing issues was a special setup they were paying a huge premium for to their Internet Service Provider. In fact, they were paying over $2100/mo for that service.
It had apparently been that way for years. Their migration to Azure happened 3 years ago. That means that for the last three years this company has been paying their ISP $2100/mo for a completely unnecessary service that has likely been making things worse and not better. That’s over $75,000.
WHY?
I’m not sure we have a definitive answer on why things were left this way. The best guess is that since their servers were hosted in the main office previously the MPLS circuit had been set up years ago to give all offices access to their production servers.
The disjointed nature of their support, changing technicians, lack of documentation and strategic planning left them operating in the dark. Years down the road the tech that did the cloud migration didn’t have the full picture on how the network was set up with the MPLS and didn’t bother to look. Nobody was looking at the telecom bills and questioning the charges. With no due diligence and no transfer of knowledge this huge problem was simply kicked down the road.
The Fix
Fixing this problem is straightforward. Every site gets its own internet and firewall and connects direct to Azure. The expensive MPLS get shut down, and the client should enjoy significant savings each month.
Strategy Matters
This illustrates why strategy, and a holistic approach to IT matters. Having a real partner that understands your needs and can make intelligent recommendations can save you a LOT of time and frustration. In this case $75K and 3 years’ worth of frustration.
If you feel like your current IT provider doesn’t take the time to look at the whole picture, doesn’t communicate, doesn’t document, and doesn’t plan, maybe it’s time to talk to a provider that will. i.t.NOW assigns an account manager to every client that works with you and your staff to outline IT strategy and vision. You have regular meetings where you get reports that offer transparency on our efforts. You also get peace of mind that problems like this one won’t happen to your business because of regular IT strategy review sessions.
Give us a call today for a free strategy session.
