What is our primary use case?
I am the only IT presence at Bolger Brothers. I can't possibly do everything for every aspect of the organization. I have to be kind of above it so I can't dive too deep because that takes too much time.
In the 16 years that I have been working with CDW, I have learned that they have the expertise and resources. Therefore, I can push off some of the more mundane day-to-day stuff and keep running tasks. This is one of those situations where I know I can trust them to keep things running and advise me of best practices. As the environment changes, e.g., our cloud solution and the IT roadmap in general, security practices change. I can't possibly keep up with it all. This service is just another resource to lean on.
For managed services, we have them for two aspects: Office 365 and Amazon WorkSpaces. I am very familiar with Office. I have used that since it was a beta product at my previous job. I was not so familiar with WorkSpaces. Both environments were created prior to me joining. I really didn't have much input. So, I really inherited them. With Office 365, I can get in, change things, and be an administrator. I really don't have to lean on CDW too much for it. They are more for if I need a direct contact with Microsoft rather than having me go through a queue. They have resources they can ping directly. With WorkSpaces, I lean on them quite heavily. That is for the entire Amazon sphere. This is because WorkSpaces is a huge monster. There are all sorts of plugins. There are apps going in and APIs going out. This was created by a previous vendor for Bolgers Brothers so I didn't really get to see behind the curtain on this too much.
How has it helped my organization?
This is probably a non-standard case study. We have actually been bug hunting for around the last two months, e.g., small issues that are not showstoppers. They are more annoying. We have been going through and squashing them. There was one bug where we couldn't find a specific reason as to why it occurs randomly through the company. We know why it occurs now. We don't really know why it pops up randomly, but all the printers will be gone. It's like, "Okay, what?" So, the traditional solution was to restart the workspace, but this was happening two to three times a week or even sometimes multiple times a day. It's like, "Well, this is annoying." So, we went on a bug hunt. We opened up a ticket and got engineers involved, pulling more resources into it. We had conference calls on debugging solutions. That's what I call a deep dive. It was to the point where we were on a conference call with engineers stacked on top of engineers who were all yelling at me to get logs as well as pull this and do that. Eventually, it just turned out to be a Group Policy Object (GPO). Something that should have been done during the initial setup and configuration almost three years ago wasn't done and that represented as a bug where you lost printers. While I could have dealt with it, it wasn't showstopping. It was annoying for me because I would get the call regardless if I was here or not.
The ability to pull talent together from CDW, Amazon, and Microsoft is something that I could never do because I'm a lowly peon. Unless I am putting down seven or eight figures, Microsoft won't deal with me. However, CDW has the ability, through their team of talent, to say, "Hey, can you jump on this call?" and a very bored engineer is like, "That is a Group Policy Object. Here is the file to fix it."
This is a very long-winded story about how I can lean on the CDW cloud teams (their Managed Cloud Services) in a way that Google doesn't really help me.
CDW Managed Cloud Services has found pitfalls and various things in the infrastructure, e.g., in routes, IP ranges, and security loopholes, that didn't need to be there. They stripped it down and went to a very flat topography, making it less complicated. So, there are less things to trip over and go wrong, which means less downtime.
What is most valuable?
The portal: The ability to get in and log a ticket is very helpful, but that is kind of a standard thing these days.
What needs improvement?
The infamous whiteboard still has some things to deploy from my standpoint and our primary business solution standpoint. So, there is always room to grow. There are a few security things that I would like to deploy, such as single sign-on so the email address and password are the login.
From my professional standpoint, I would like an app to manage WorkSpaces from my phone. I don't believe there is one right now, and I have looked. For example, if somebody comes to me, and heaven forbid I'm not in the office, my solution is to log into my phone to the portal via web, then scroll down and restart their WorkSpaces. This is assuming that I have the data, because in places like rural Pennsylvania, you can't guarantee that. They have an app for managing the servers, but WorkSpaces is where most of my day-to-day stuff ends up. This is not really under CDW, but if CDW developed an app for that, I definitely would partake in it.
If you take a dive through their websites, it feels like they were all put together by different teams. I know they are changing this because I am pretty sure that we have talked about this issue with the account reps. In the two years that we have used them, the websites have improved considerably. One used to be like an old SharePoint site that was Internet-facing, and I was very scared of it. They have actually gone to custom dashboards now, but I would love to see a single dashboard for my AWS, Office 365, and all of that stuff just laid out about three-tiers deep so I don't have to dig through websites.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this service for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Our downtime per year, during a normal 8:00 to 17:00, is probably less than three hours.
It has saved us time in terms of not having downtime. It has saved us money because the accounting side is pushed heavily through WorkSpaces. Everybody uses it, but WorkSpace and accounting go hand in hand because we run all our billing through it. When accounting can run stuff consistently, that is a win for everyone because they are not as backlogged. Obviously, accounting is money going out and money coming in.
How are customer service and support?
Brian is my account manager. I can ping him. There are a number of techs that operate under Brian. So, I can ping them for stuff and don't really need to log a ticket. They are into WorkSpaces far more than me, so I can say, "Hey, I'm seeing this behavior. Should I log a ticket?" Often, they reply back with, "No, run this command," or, "It's this service breaking."
This is a resource sort of thing, where unless I scrolled deeply into WorkSpaces and neglected everything else, then I can't do it. While I would love to know everything about everything, it is just not possible. WorkSpaces is a critical component, but we also have the wireless, printers, physical workstations, our network infrastructure, social media, websites, and email. The way that IT works, it just goes around in circles. It is kind of mixed together. So, you can't possibly run everything inside unless you have a large company with a large staff.
50/50 - they know if something is wrong before we do. We have enough alerting in place that if something triggers, a ticket will be auto-generated, then there will be an engineer on it. This can be at all hours of the night, which is a very nice component. So, in the middle of the night, if a server crashes, there is a keep alive alert that states, "Hey, this thing is offline." Oftentimes, they will login and restart it before I even notice, then I will follow through the emails. For most of the showstopping items, those alerts and tickets are created automatically, usually before I notice, unless I am in the middle of something in the cloud.
There are also probably less mission-critical items that they might not necessarily see because there is no practical way to have that much alerting. However, we can meet in the middle, where I will create a ticket saying that this is down. While it is not exactly super important, I am wondering what the best solution for it is.
I'll get an initial email, which will say, "A ticket has been auto-created." Then, within a minute or two, an engineer will be jumping in, saying, "Looking at this now." I can then just follow along and see that engineer XYZ is rebooting the server, and if the server came up okay and tested fine. I will usually test it on my end like, "Oh, yeah, we are up." I will reply back to the ticket, then they will close it. After that, we usually have a review, and that's where Brian, the account exec, comes in. Once a month, we will go through the tickets, and say, "This is a recurring issue. Why is that?"
There was actually one awhile back where they had a weird error message that we had to look up. That was because Amazon was decommissioning the hardware that the virtual server that it was on. So, we had to look up the proper fix to that. It was actually to shut down the server, then boot it back up, and it will then appear on the new hardware. Stuff like that is cool because I can look at an error code, and say, "Oh, X, Y, and Z," then Google it to get an answer. Whereas, Brian can actually pull up the Amazon tech article, and say, "Oh, this is what Amazon will throw out to you when they are decommissioning old hardware," which is very helpful in terms of clarification.
The service provider has performed amazingly from a project management standpoint. Having Brian as an account executive who can run and be the voice on the CDW side, poking and being like, "Why is this ticket not done? Why is this ticket not done? What do we do about this?" His expertise in terms of what other companies are doing is priceless to where I don't necessarily have to read a white paper on the latest trends. He's like a one stop shop for that knowledge, to say, "Oh, I have a construction company in Oklahoma, and they are doing something similar. Here is what they're doing." I can then investigate that technology to see if it is a fit for us.
Every month, Brian sends me, "This increased because you put so much more information on this and you're not using these shares or IPv4 addresses. We can drop these." It is a good breakdown, because if I get a question, "Hey, our bill has been the same for six months. Why did it go up $400 (or $40 or 14 cents)?" Then, I can say, "Oh, that's because we paid for this and dropped this."
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
There was a previous solution that Bolger Brothers used, which was a third-party cloud solution. The downtime on that was considerable. That was reflected with schedules falling behind and goals missed. With Amazon, we probably maintain like a 99.9 uptime right now. For a company of our size, with the budget and the amount of resources we push into WorkSpaces, this is pretty good.
We were previously using UDNI, which is a local shop in Altoona. We switched vendors due to bad experiences. I came to the organization in 2019. The catalyst for the switch was that, a few years prior, UDNI got hit by the WannaCry bug, which was the encrypted scheme. Bolger Brothers ended up losing about six months worth of work, which had a substantial financial impact.
Bolger Brothers decided that they needed an advocate for themselves when it came to IT. Essentially, they had no one internal and were unsure of what they were signing. Most of the time, it was, "Here is something that is new and shiny," and they would sign for it. Then my position came about, and we redid everything from the ground up: the infrastructure, wireless, cameras, social media presence, the website, etc.
I've used CDW since at least 2005. I have leaned on them pretty heavily over the years for technical expertise and physical equipment. They are a one stop shop for nearly everything IT-related.
At my previous job, I ran help desks for a large organization in the US, but it also had some international presence. I got equipment, services, pricing, and technology solutions for, "I have a problem, what are the industry standards right now?" All of that I leaned on CDW far more heavily than anywhere else. When I made the switch to Bolger Brothers, CDW came along for the ride. That is where I was able to say, "Okay, I have a problem. What's the solution?"
It has grown into that relationship where they always help me out and I always help them out by name dropping to other people. I know I can go to them and get an answer or multiple answers for any problem that I am having.
How was the initial setup?
CDW wasn't involved in the design. That was a previous vendor, and that is where I inherited it. CDW was more than willing to pick up and adopt the solution, where they said, "Okay, we didn't build this, but we will take ownership of it." We labeled out the support assumptions, which is where they went through and made recommendations for, "Here is how you're built and here's how you should be." That was a pretty lengthy process, where we had multiple engineers going through, being like, "Here's your security. Here is your virtual server setup currently. Here's what it should be. Here's your network. Here are your workspaces." There were some items on that list that were easy and some that are still not completed just because of the last year and a half, timing, and other things. For the parts that they were involved with, they have been very helpful.
From the time that we entered into an agreement to use the CDW Managed Cloud Services solution, it took us a couple months before we were able to start using it. We had some design meetings, then the actual transfer of the Amazon component to me.
Because WorkSpaces was still relatively new at that time, not many people had transferred vendors. We had to get additional resources from Amazon on a call to make sure we did it right and didn't end up in purgatory, essentially where nobody has ownership of our workspace. That was a few months of paperwork moving back and forth. Once we had the call set up, it worked pretty quickly.
An initial setup was required because our situation was unusual, not necessarily unique, but we were transferring vendors from a pre-existing environment. I remember going over it with the CDW Managed Cloud Services team for AWS, and it was, "We usually spin up environments or a company will create them internally, then we assume control." So, they really weren't used to going from vendor to company to themselves through another vendor, but we wanted to make sure that we did everything correctly. There were additional calls for the process and confirmation, even Amazon was a little bit like, "Oh, well, I'm not really sure how to do this without breaking everything. Let's check."
What about the implementation team?
While the initial ramp up through CDW cost a little bit of money, we did a ground up review of what's in place, what's bad, and what we should change. This was a very flexible process that I don't think a lot of people would have done. They just would have been like, "Okay, we're going to manage it for you, but we're not actually going to tell you everything about it," versus CDW who put a couple of engineers on this. We actually went from the ground up, "Here is what you have. Here is what we recommend. We have no idea what this does, so let's delete it. This is costing you money and you're not using it." That sort of flexibility and openness is priceless.
Probably about a dozen were involved in the setup. There were two from our side: myself and the president. We also had some people from the previous vendor, a bunch of CDW, and a couple of Amazon employees.
If we have a design or bug meeting, others can jump in on it. So, if there's a behavior that someone is seeing, he/she can jump on the call and explain it to the engineer. Then, I can watch it as well, and say, "Here is what we are seeing," and the engineer can be like, "Oh, okay. That makes sense." If we're doing a design, such as a new service or new server being spun up, that CDW will have to manage, those parties can jump on the call as well.
For the vast majority of stuff, it is just me doing it alone.
What was our ROI?
It is a sanity savings. I could probably keep things running without them, but it would just be status quo. There would be no forward momentum. We have a call every month with my account manager, Brian, and it's always, "Here's where we're at, and here's where we're going." Then, he will always mention, "This is what CDW is adding. This is what Amazon's adding. This is what we are seeing from an industry standard, trend-wise. People are doing this and that. I have customers doing X, Y, and Z, grabbing this plugin." It is always helpful to hear what other companies are trailblazing, because then I can say, "Ooh, I like that feature," or, "That sounds like a good idea."
We are actually looking at something now for geo-redundancy, which is something I never considered. All of our stuff is located in a single data center in Reston, Virginia. We have a tentative plan at some point to create copies in another data center. So, if where we are at now ever goes down, which is highly unlikely but stuff happens, then we will at least have the redundancy to pop back up on the West Coast in about 10 to 15 minutes.
I can work on side projects without having to do daily maintenance and the usual break-fix stuff, which relates to the bug hunting previously mentioned. The ability for me to work on my own stuff, which is usually driven by my employees, is beyond helpful. It frees up my time to work on other things.
I can push through some of my infamous whiteboard items without having to worry about the day-to-day operations because it's all monitored and taken care of. For example, CDW pushes our patches on the second Tuesday of every month. They do a restart of all our workspaces. This stuff could be accomplished with a scheduled task. However, even with a scheduled task, I would have to sit there, watch, and make sure everything came back up. Instead, they do that for me.
It is hard to put a value on it. I leveraged it as this company by saying, "It's actually less than we were paying with our previous vendor, but here is what you're getting out of it." It has shown true since then.
You can't really put a price on the overall cost of the solution with the entire package. The first year that I was here, I did a budget breakdown: here is what I spent and here is what we saved. When I presented it at the end of the year, they were like, "Okay, that's beautiful," because no one had ever seen that before. It was like, "Okay, I swapped out the phone system. Here was what it was costing us. Here was what we paid. Here is what we'll save." It was, "Oh, we are going to pay for everything within three years." A lot of mysteries have been answered by the monthly budget breakdown.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
A lot of people see the cost, and they are like, "Well, that is a lot if we already have an internal IT person." It's like, "Well, you're not just getting that." You are getting access to resources and peace of mind, to say, "I don't have to worry about this server dying at 2:00 in the morning because these guys will handle it." I will wake up, and if there would have been a problem, it would have been addressed. It would have been notated and fixed.
What other advice do I have?
CDW Managed Cloud Services provide managed services to support our infrastructure solution in regards to the cloud. When I think of infrastructure, there is infrastructure in the cloud because we have our virtual network in there, e.g., all the networking between the servers and workspaces. These are all routes in which I have leaned on them to get clarification for, such as, "If I change this, will it break everything?" They answer, "No." Then, I ask, "What are the best practices?" and they go through them. There is also the local infrastructure, which is my physical setup in the main office and our satellite locations. While CDW does provide the hardware and some of the assistance for that, this is not under the managed services.
We are planning on increasing usage in terms of the WorkSpaces. By just the nature of business, more stuff will be added going forward. There should be an increasing number of servers and WorkSpaces as well as more traffic. This is just the nature of, "Oh, that is new and shiny. That has to go up there." It's always something. In the next three years, we will probably be doubling our footprint.
If you've never experienced it, this service is definitely worth a look at. From a traditional IT guy perspective, it takes a lot off your plate. It allows you to focus on other stuff without putting out daily fires. It makes you aware of security protections, infrastructure improvements, and all sorts of stuff that you probably would never figure out on your own.
I would definitely rate it as nine out of 10. CDW is always growing and adding stuff.
Employees, if they want to buy something, don't have to make a CDW account anymore. They can actually use their Microsoft email and that can go to me for approval. I can make sure they are not charging the company, then I can approve it. Before, it was like this weird sort of informal thing.
