Client:
Eric Fraher, Finance Director
Turbine Controls, Inc.
5 Old Windsor Rd
Bloomfield, CT 06002
tel: 860-242-0448
direct: 860-761-7554
efraher@tcimro.com

TCI had a full time IT Manager on staff with a salary comensurate with his role and skill level.  They decided to eliminate that position and utilize the outsourced IT model provided by Dynamic Alliance.  Within the DA model, Charles Hooper was assigned as their primary engineer and budgeted approximately 10 hours per week.  The immediate result, based on the burdened cost of the salaried staff versus our rate averaging 10 hours/week, was a significant cost savings.

They had servers beyond their recommended lifetime, many different vintages of computer workstations and plenty of annoying and repetitive little problems that at the start of the contract required most of the DA contract time to address via "fire-fighting."   Budgets were tight and the initial task was to maintain the existing infrastructure while TCI re-aligned their business, but to improve the stability of the infrastructure and reduce the annoying repetitive problems, improving efficiency.  

Throughout the normal process of the DA model, as problems are addressed, we cure the root-cause rather than just the symptoms, problem occurrence therefore wanes, and more time becomes available to continue improvements to the infrastructure and to direct toward projects. 

As TCI re-aligned their business, some of the projects that we implemented/assisted:

1. Standards for PC procurement and deployment, reducing the time to deploy and maintain PC's, while increasing the functionality available to end users;
    
   
2. Migrated from personal printers to fewer workgroup printers/multifunction devices, reducing printer-related problems, and again, increasing the functionality available to all end users;
    
   
3. Replaced their servers with a new rackmounted server infrastructure, migrating from Novell to MS Windows, and providing all of the necessary network services:
   a) File sharing -- departmental hiearchy with appropriate security
   b) Print sharing
   c) Exchange/Outlook email, with support for 12+ blackberries
   d) Central anti-virus/anti-malware
   e) Data backup / offsite
   f) Line-of-Business application (SBT, then Oracle-based Impresa)
   g) Software license management
   h) Internet/email "Acceptable Use" Policy
    
4. Technical liaison for network access of manufacturing and other processes; plasma robot, hvac, security system, etc.
    
5. WAN connectivity to sister company TC Power
    
6. Windows Server Update Services, to maintain the Windows and Office update status of all workstations and servers in a controlled manner.
    
7. Outsourced email anti-spam

TCI today, has successfully re-aligned their own business, and relative to their IT infrastructure, are in "maintenance" mode.  They again have an IT Manager on staff (though the driving factor of this was to support their new LOB Application, Impresa, which requires constant maintenance), and retain our services for a very small monthly fee.  We have trained the IT staffperson to take over the daily IT routine and most other IT tasks, and we continually monitor their server and network health, backups, anti-virus, Microsoft updates, and remain available should any problems arise, though few and far between.