A mid-sized public university, like many others, used their own on-prem data center for all data storage and backups. They were familiar with the flexibility that the cloud would provide, but they were hesitant to take the leap. They needed a solid business case and a way to ensure it would work in their environment. A series of events caused them to reevaluate their disaster recovery plan, which led them to quickly conclude that they needed additional capacity as well as geographical redundancy. The cloud seemed ideally suited to their needs, but they still needed to ensure it would work … Read More
VPN Upgrade Reduces Hospital’s Hassle
The healthcare division of a Fortune 500 company provides data processing services to its hospital clients. They use an IPsec VPN to transport data between the client and their cloud-hosted web application platform. Security and HIPAA compliance are obviously very important. Originally, our client used the VPN offered by the cloud service provider, but they were concerned about limitations in traffic visibility and the inability to locally initiate a tunnel. The final straw came when a new hospital client required the use of Internet Key Exchange v2 (IKEv2) protocol. Our team was able to use an open-source solution to replace … Read More
Could IT Managed Services Be Right for Your Organization?
M&S Solution Architect, Shruti Karat, discusses three reasons why IT managed services may be right for your organization. – Video transcript – Hello, Everyone, I wanted to take some time and talk about three reasons why IT managed services might be right for your business. Jumping right into it, reason number one, it allows you to focus on your core competencies. Every organization has core competencies that make you unique. It drives your business and differentiates you from other companies. However, all organizations have functions that are not part of their competitive advantage but is needed to be performed for … Read More
Business Intelligence Hampered by a Lack of Clear Role Management
A top 70 national university uses an enterprise-level solution to report on important university-wide research data and business intelligence. Access to this data is managed by roles across a multitude of schools within the university, but the lack of role management across the university was limiting access and use. To complicate things, the various stakeholders were initially reluctant to adopt a university-wide role framework or standard policy for provisioning and de-provisioning. In short: identity and access management (IAM) were inefficient and disjointed. Our team developed and implemented a phased approach to implement role-based access control (RBAC) framework to upgrade its … Read More
Big Challenges Facing Higher Education IT Administrators for 2020-2021
Watch the video of M&S Director of Higher Education, Kate Hazen, addressing some of the big challenges facing Higher Education IT Administrators in the coming year. Contact us to discuss how we can help you meet these challenges. – Video transcript – With the increased pressure on higher education along with diminishing budgets, higher education IT organizations are faced with some difficult decisions in regard to where to focus valuable time and resources. I believe three key areas should be addressed: Number One, there should be an increased emphasis on training and support for faculty and students in online technology … Read More
Cloud POC Demonstrates value to government agency
A large government organization intended to use Oracle User Productivity Kit to create and publish training material. Unfortunately, the original procurement did not obtain the necessary hardware resources. After collecting requirements and working with cloud providers, our team was able to obtain operating credits for a proof of concept (POC) that would enable all required functionality and security. The POC was also able to deliver additional functionality, including single sign-on, virtual desktop infrastructure, and shared storage. We were able to demonstrate not only the effectiveness of a cloud architecture but also the reduction in implementation and maintenance costs. If you’d … Read More
Nonprofit Supporting Survivors of Human Trafficking Gains New Clarity from Salesforce Implementation
An East Coast-based nonprofit organization tracked all their interactions with donors and people in need using an antiquated web page, which made reporting nearly impossible. They also needed a better way to track employee hours, volunteer hours, and services provided to those in need. Finally, they needed a way to gain visibility into how to improve their services. Our team volunteered to customize the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack to better suit the needs of the nonprofit. We provided a comprehensive reporting system, time tracking with approvals and a way to show how they support their clients over the years with … Read More
Enabling University Students to Share Experiences From Outside the Classroom
Universities strive to build strong connections with every student and deliver an unparalleled education that combines classroom learning with real-world experiences and self-discovery. Our client, a top 50 liberal arts university, embarked on a project to meet this need with a new hybrid program. Their plan was to use Salesforce to track the many interactions that students had with mentors and faculty, as well as to provide a platform for reflecting on experiences and opportunities that happened outside the classroom. Efforts prior to our involvement resulted in fundamental challenges, including difficult navigation, limited reporting capabilities, and a lack of alignment … Read More