The Ceaco Puzzle: Citara’s 24/7 Monitoring Service Solves Productivity Issues and Saves MONEY
The Client
Ceaco, Co.
Puzzle and Game Company
Newton, MA
The Background
Citara Systems has worked with Ceaco for over 7 years. In that time, Ceaco has acquired another company, merged IT infrastructures, and rolled out new systems. Citara has been there every step of the way, helping them increase productivity, decrease downtime, and realize efficiencies across their operation. Our relationship has included providing a range of services, including Consulting, IT Project Services, Tech Support, and System Maintenance.
But when Citara saw a way to make Ceaco’s maintenance program even more efficient, we spoke right up, knowing it would reduce their IT support costs—and our fees!
The Challenge: Reliable Backups and Reactive Problem Resolution
Ceaco had been on Citara’s basic maintenance plan for several years. We manually checked their network once a week to uncover issues requiring remediation and provided systems maintenance to keep the operating environment up-to-date. Although this was sufficient for several years, we started to notice problems that could compromise the reliability of the network and the backup environment.
The Solution: Citara’s 24/7 Monitoring and Data Vaulting Services
We saw the opportunity to make Ceaco’s IT environment more reliable and easier to manage, so we discussed changes with their management. We upgraded them to our 24/7 Monitoring Service, so their systems could be observed around the clock. This greatly enhanced our ability to remediate issues in a timely way—before those issues became catastrophic. In parallel, we changed Ceaco’s backup strategy from local tape to our Vaulting Service. This alleviated the cost associated with replacing the failing backup hardware and software, and provided an immediate offsite backup solution that Ceaco had been looking for. And, since our Vaulting Service is also monitored, we’d know if there was an issue with the backups right away. Finally, we rolled all the maintenance and monitoring of their hardware and software into one contract at a fixed monthly cost, which allowed Ceaco to budget their yearly IT expenses more easily.
The Result: Greater Productivity and Better Protection at Lower Cost
Ceaco was thrilled. The Vaulted platform was less costly for them than getting new hardware to fix their dated local backup system, and the move away from tape-swapping freed up staff and made for a reliable, secure, offsite backup environment. The 24/7 monitoring of all their systems prevented several issues before they caused costly downtime. (Our phones practically stopped ringing, since many of Ceaco’s IT problems were solved proactively!) By rolling several of Citara’s Managed Services into one fixed-cost contract, Ceaco could budget their IT costs out for the year, and saved administrative time, too, since they no longer had to process and track multiple invoices.