Total Access - Case Study

Customised IT solution from VpsCity ensures an ‘always on’ IT infrastructure for Total Access

By opting for VpsCity’s complete IT solution, Total Access has been able to derive significant cost efficiencies and provide enhanced services which has created a platform for achieving high performance. VpsCity ensures continuous uptime for Total Access, allowing for seamless trade. The company’s team can focus on more strategic issues related to growth and expansion.

Retaining customers and building a loyal customer base has become top priority for all businesses. To meet these needs, VpsCity helped Total Access to integrate their branches and gain a single view of the operations for effective management and control. Its service, provides an optimised solution to the operation as the need was to leverage technology to nurture business growth.

Business Challenge

Total Access are leading providers of Access equipment, with locations in Auckland, Waikato and Wellington. Their network provides easy access to an extensive range of access hire equipment and services, leading into building their very own Rebuild and Maintenance facility. With these robust systems and processes, Total Access realised that it required a robust, scalable and highly available IT infrastructure to match. Total Access wanted to consolidate its IT infrastructure with a single service provider to accelerate IT deployments, streamline processes, reduce operational costs and gain better control over operations.

Value Proposition

The reason why Total Access chose VpsCity as their managed IT hosting service provider was because of a similarity in approach of both the companies– providing innovative, highly scalable and available solutions to customers that surpass their expectations.

Total Access felt that the advantages converged IP communications offered in terms of both cost savings and greater business agility could not be ignored. In order to guarantee delivery to its customers against its strict service level agreements, Total Access needed to be confident that any new network would be robust. Given the value and business critical importance of the transactions it manages, network security was also a key concern. Total Access therefore needed a technology partner that could not only design and deploy the new network but also manage and maintain all its elements, and guarantee its integrity. The success of the migration in terms of minimal disruption to business was of critical importance to Total Access

Total Access core application suite is hosted at VpsCity’s facility in Auckland. VpsCity’s certified data centre has helped alleviate the security concerns Total Access had with regard to hosting their core application suite with a third-party service provider. VpsCity and Total Access teams worked collaboratively to ensure a seamless migration of the core application suite from the earlier service providers to VpsCity’s data centre. With its IT infrastructure being managed by VpsCity, the outcome has been a significant improvement in running of its IT operations.

Solution

Deploying a new network infrastructure and an IP telephony system for Total Access.

The company opted for VpsCity’s Cloud services. The core applications are now hosted at VpsCity’s data centre in Auckland and is made available to their branches on a combination of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.

Solution Snapshot

VpsCity offered Total Access the following services:

·     Business UFB - ultra-fast broadband facilities providing reliable connectivity to all customers

·     Business vDSL2

·     CloudDrive Storage - assists with all backup and data retention purposes

·     Idera Cloud Backup – protects your hosting data by using replication and synchronisation over the network storing point in time snaps shots in disk based storage

·     Operating System: Windows 2012 Server (R2) Std 64Bit

·     MS Xchg – Enterprise – a mail server and calendaring server. This runs exclusively on a Windows Server operating system

·     Enhanced Server/Office Support

·     Managed Firewall

·     Cloud PBX - a complete business phone service utilising the latest telephony technology: VoIP – Voice over Internet Protocol

IT Network Infrastructure

From the engineering to the monitoring and patching, VpsCity fully manages the environment. We host the backup solution and web presence in the data centre as well, which makes VpsCity responsible for day-to-day IT operations. 

Even after the successful installation, VpsCity continues to help refresh, adjust and enhance their hardware to accommodate growing demand. Total Access upgraded their hosted facilities to include faster storage, increased security and optimised data encryption. 

How We Delivered

VpsCity gathered and collated all necessary information to build the network infrastructure, this aided the entire migration process. VpsCity leveraged the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), powered by a Windows Server operating system, to deploy remote desktop services that provided employees at Total Access the flexibility to access their corporate Windows 2012 R2 desktop and application environment running in the data centre on thin clients. Data storage security and backup was administered by the VpsCity CloudDrive. The VpsCity CloudDrive assists with all backup and data retention purposes, a seven-year data retention plan is in place. VpsCity delivers this through a proprietary backup solution. With the help of detailed network performance reporting and class of service profiling options, VpsCity structured a Wide Area Connectivity solution to Total Access, delivered via Fibre/VDSL, this was an ideal solution to improve the performance of its applications, drive down network maintenance and management costs and increase workplace productivity amongst all branches. The structured end-to-end network management including alerts, device monitoring, fault and change management and environment reporting provide an end-to-end experience for Total Access.

All the virtual desktops are centrally located, making it easier to control access to confidential data. In addition, the office environment is strictly controlled and standardised. Users enjoy the reliability, data protection, and disaster recovery capabilities provided through the server applications. Shared memory is used to store and backup all desktop data.

Through user state virtualisation and application virtualisation, users can easily create an office desktop environment connected to user accounts and stored. By deploying enterprise applications and information security to the virtual machines (VMs), VDI technology helps to ensure that confidential information stays within the VM.

IP Telephony System

VpsCity designed and deployed a new network infrastructure and a state of-the-art IP telephony system. VpsCity standardised on Cisco switching for the new network infrastructure. The telephony solution includes Cisco IP handsets for internal use and can scale to thousands of internal and remote handsets at any one time. The Cisco Extension mobility function is used to allow the rapid deployment and configuration of IP phones. Four servers support the IP telephony services in a high availability set up. The system supports Call Management and Voicemail as well as a custom greeting feature with IVR and custom call routing. It also supports both a Fax2email and Email2fax feature and conference facilities to cater for ten conference rooms. However, conference rooms can be scaled to as many as required. All VOIP endpoints are managed and deployed from the VpsCity network, and the helpdesk support team in the Auckland data centre. The telephony system provides interconnected phone lines and high quality calls. VpsCity provides full support services for the IP telephony systems and infrastructure.

Key Benefits

·     Cost benefit from consolidation of applications and their hosting

·     Efficiencies from streamlining of IT operations with a single service provider

·     Scalability and flexibility of facility and IT infrastructure to accommodate future projects and growth

·     Highly available connectivity - Carrier neutral infrastructure with 99.9% uptime

·     Team could focus on enabling core business activities

·     Secure infrastructure

·     Scalability and flexibility of IT infrastructure to accommodate future projects and growth

·     High availability of IT infrastructure and 99.9% uptime ensures a consistent customer experience

·     Round the clock support, maintenance and technical expertise ensures faster turnaround times (TAT) and improved performance levels

·     A robust and a scalable IT infrastructure helps support Total Access and its customers’ expansion and growth plans

Key Takeaways

Through VpsCity’s comprehensive solution, Total Access was able to achieve an unparalleled IT experience. With its IT infrastructure now optimally utilised, Total Access was able to greatly reduce costs, have better control on its bandwidth usage, and meet fluctuating server and network loads seamlessly. Its portal and applications are safe and secure, with near instant responses from VpsCity’s highly efficient support team.

They have the flexibility to expand their service portfolio based on the business demand. The partnership with VpsCity has enabled Total Access to enjoy a robust, secure, scalable and a highly available IT infrastructure that allows it to offer uninterrupted services to its clients.

They have been able to optimise their IT investments to deliver their service to their rapidly growing customer base. With its IT infrastructure being managed by VpsCity, the company is assured of smooth and hassle-free IT infrastructure operations and is able to focus on growing its business in New Zealand.

If you would like VpsCity to streamline your business in a similar way that we have done for Total Access, then contact our team of experts today by filling in the below form.