Company: Computer and Network Consultants
Location: Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, UK
Industry: Computer and Network Consultants
Number of employees: 14
Product in use: GFI MAX RemoteManagement™
Gary Jowett and Graham Lind formed Computer and Network Consultants (CNC) in 1996, although the pair have long-term relationships with customers that date back to the 1980s. Since 1996, the company, which is based in Shoreham-by-Sea in Sussex, has grown steadily to its current staff of 14.
CNC has strong links with key manufacturers and suppliers such as HP, Microsoft and Symantec, building itself an enviable reputation of quality and reliability. “We strive towards excellence in our current fields of expertise, whilst continually evaluating new products and services that we feel may be valuable additions to our product and solutions portfolio,” explained Computer and Network Consultants Sales and Marketing Director, Gary Jowett.
CNC has 60 customers, with a particular emphasis on SMBs with between 10 and 150 employees, in Sussex, Kent and London. “Unlike many resellers, we are not simply box shifters but provide service-based solutions due to the attractive margin opportunities involved,” said Jowett. “However, we wanted to find a less labor intensive way to offer the service that our customers wanted.”
Jowett looked at numerous server monitoring solutions on the market, including one from industry giant CA that took a week to set up, yet still didn’t work which frustrated Jowett enormously. “We didn’t want a sledgehammer to crack a nut and found most of the solutions on the market were too price prohibitive. When we saw GFI MAX RemoteManagement we realized that it had cracked it.”
GFI MAX RemoteManagement is a server monitoring system is designed especially for IT support companies and managed service providers. Written from the ground up to be easy to use and quick to install, GFI MAX RemoteManagement allows support companies to monitor all of the ‘live’ IT at their customers’ sites, offering proactive alerting to issues relating to disk space, TCP ports, failed RAID disks, website downtime and more.
CNC has GFI MAX RemoteManagement running on a large 42-inch plasma screen in its helpdesk room which is monitored by its four helpdesk staff. The screen shows GFI MAX RemoteManagement's XYZ view that lists all of CNC’s customer networks that currently have an issue. “It is very clear and even barks when a new issue is discovered,” commented Jowett. “Thanks to GFI MAX RemoteManagement issues are logged immediately, prioritized and then dealt with in a timely fashion – ideally before the customer ever realizes there is a problem.”
Through GFI MAX RemoteManagement, CNC has set up tailored disk space thresholds for each of its customers. “Servers used to crash all the time due to them running out of disk space, which caused no end of problems for our customers and was highly time intensive for our support team. By putting in these thresholds we can markedly reduce the amount of time we have to be onsite whilst ensuring more server uptime for our customers,” explained Jowett.
GFI MAX RemoteManagement now tracks 80 separate servers for CNC with its small agent particularly impressing Jowett in addition to its ease of use. “The simplicity of GFI MAX RemoteManagement is the key to its success,” he enthused.
“GFI MAX RemoteManagement enables us to provide a better service to our customers and increases our perceived value, whilst at the same time provides an ongoing revenue stream and ties customers into long term contracts with us.”
Numerous support companies such as CNC deploy GFI MAX RemoteManagement to cut operational costs, boost service levels and client retention and make it easier to win new contracts. At GFI MAX RemoteManagement's price – just pennies per server per day – the return on investment is almost immediate.
“It is great to work with a vendor that appreciates the needs of its customers. GFI MAX RemoteManagement listens to us and is 100% focused on product development to make a great product even better,” added Jowett.
“CNC was quick to realize the ongoing revenue benefits of implementing GFI MAX RemoteManagement and offering a 24/7 server monitoring solution to its customer base,” said GFI MAX RemoteManagement, General Manager, Doug Wilson. “Through the web based nature of the solution it has been able to expand its business by breaking down the traditional geographical boundaries to reach out to customers throughout the country with a cost effective server monitoring solution.”
For more information on GFI MAX RemoteManagement, visit: http://www.gfi.com/it-managed-services-software
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