Small Business Network
Wallingford Computer Services Case Study-Alliance Leasing
A tough call.
Sometimes you just have to start over. When Alliance Leasing, an Austin-based capital equipment leasing company, approached Wallingford Computer Services about upgrading their computer systems, they had what could best be called a mish-mash of hardware. "They weren't really networked," said Eddie Rodarte, VP of Sales and Marketing. "We just had some 486 machines hooked up to a server that was also being used as a workstation. No internet access, no email-we were pretty much in the dark ages."
Rodarte decided to call Wallingford Computer Services. "We'd actually done business with Wallingford for the last six years as a leasing vendor," said Rodarte. "So we were familiar with their systems." But why choose Wallingford over a larger vendor like Dell? "The nice thing about Wallingford as opposed to someone like Dell is that they can actually handle the installation, engineering and design-they pretty much do the whole thing." Said Rodarte. "They came in, I told them what I wanted to accomplish, and they came back with a proposal."
And the proposal was a tough one to swallow, at least initially. Wallingford Computer Services account manager Matt Riley had researched Alliance's existing systems and arrived at a simple solution: "We told them they should scrap everything," said Riley. "I proposed that they standardize their workstations and upgrade to a dedicated server with automated backup." With uniformly configured workstations and a fast 100-Base-T network, Alliance could reduce maintenance and support headaches-and speed things up a bit.
But starting over from scratch raised some concerns at Alliance. Not only did downtime have to be minimized, but a large volume of legacy data had to be migrated to the new system. "That was the part I was dreading the most," said Rodarte. "I was concerned about transferring the data and how long would we be down and not able to access our information."
Wallingford Computer Services Network Manager Randy Wilson had the solution. "They understood that the best thing to do was to start over, but their business demanded that there be very little downtime," Randy said. "I explained to them that we build and test the network as a unit in-house, before it's installed." In fact, WE preconfigures and pre-tests all equipment before it goes in the box-reducing the risk of failures and problems down the road. "All of our systems go through 36-48 hours of intensive low-level and operating system-level diagnostics," said Wilson. "We also perform rigorous hands-on test using the actual shipping software."
The Installation
With most of the work done beforehand, WE proceeded with on-site installation. When time came to migrate the data, WE implemented a phase-in approach to minimize the time required. "The process was actually quite simple," notes Wilson. "We migrated the data to the new server and then transferred users to new machines on at a time." Rodarte had one word to describe the transition: "Painless. When they brought the system in they downloaded the information to the new server and we were up and running in a couple of hours."
With virtually no downtime, Alliance got back to business immediately. "Everything that they said they'd do, they did, in the time frame they gave us, which is pretty surprising these days," Rodalte said. Indeed, Wallingford's customers keep coming back and referring friends and associates for precisely that reason-WE delivers reliably, on time, configured the way customers want it.
Regardless of how rigorously they're tested, computers aren't perfect. Perhaps the most important measure of a manufacturer's performance is response time when things go wrong. And WE is second to none for trouble resolution, with some of the fastest turnaround in the entire industry. When Alliance had trouble with one of their new hubs, Wallingford Computer Services' performance gave the word responsive new meaning. "We had a hub that went down," said Rodalte. "We called Wallingford and an hour later Randy came by with a new hub, hooked it up, and it was done." Now that's responsive.
The Benefits.
"Communication is critical in our business," notes Rodarte. "Our vendors are salespeople, and a lot of our customers are using email almost exclusively." For Alliance Leasing, a fast, efficient network with internet connectivity has proved to be an invaluable tool for communicating with customers. And it's opened up a whole new world of information, enabling them to research customer and product information quickly. With fast and thorough access to information, Alliance is able to offer its customers the best leasing solution available. "It's a very competitive industry," said Rodalte. "We need tools like this we can use-it gives us a big advantage."
Vastly improved communication isn't the only benefit. With standardized, reliable WE systems and centralized backup and storage, Alliance has streamlined administration and troubleshooting, and made everyone's jobs a little bit easier. Uniform workstation configurations allow painless, simple upgrades in the future. With a reliable Wallingford solution, Eddie Rodalte knows that, when he leaves the office every night, his data is secure. And peace of mind is something you just can't put a price tag on
