Case Study - Service Strategies

Background

Service Strategies is a micro-multinational company, headquartered in San Diego, California. The company provides consulting, training, and certification and standards programs that help the world's leading technology companies deliver consistent, high-quality service and support.

Since the company's distributed workforce provides training, consulting and auditing services around the world, a decision was made to move all key operational systems to the cloud as a means of becoming more efficient. The company recognized that a cloud-based file server that allowed the team to easily access and share large files and programs from anywhere in the world was critical to the virtualization strategy.

Challenge

As the economy began to shift, Service Strategies proactively sought ways to become more cost efficient. Virtualization would allow the company to reduce IT costs and maintenance while enhancing accessibility for the distributed team. To accomplish this goal, the company moved all of its systems to the cloud - including CRM and telecommunications - but was missing a reliable, easy-to-use online file server.

Service Strategies wanted to leverage the latest technology so that they were not reliant on a single physical location. With a distributed work force and global client base, the ability to access and share files and business data from anywhere in the world was vital to the company's operating strategy. Having already moved its other systems online, a cloud-based file server was the missing link to complete their transformation.

The Solution

Service Strategies had transitioned to cloud based systems with the exception of a file server. Prior to Egnyte, the company was using Microsoft Small Business Server for network and file storage. The company wanted to eliminate the costs of in-house IT maintenance and the hassle of managing a VPN, while making it easier to access and share files.

While researching cloud based file servers, they found that many companies focused on backup and therefore did not meet the requirement for a true online file server. File sharing was a top priority. They needed to easily access and share a variety of large files without using email. After discovering Egnyte through an online search, Service Strategies signed up for a trial. Egnyte gave them the feeling of browsing to a network drive and the ease of navigating and sharing files made a big difference.

Egnyte's simple interface and special permissions made it easy for the company to adopt the new file server without any training or tutorials. The remote team seamlessly transitioned to the online file server, which now allows them to work from anywhere in the world without experiencing the latency issues of a VPN. With Egnyte, Service Strategies has met their goal of becoming a virtual company and saves thousands of dollars annually as a result.

Key Benefits

• Ease of accessing and sharing data
• Ability to work from anywhere in the world
• Eliminated cost of software updates, firewalls and resources to update and manage file servers
• Special permissions and folders that allow easy, secure file sharing with partners and consultants
• System scales as company brings in consultants for special client projects without expense of new infrastructure or programming

Testimonial

Greg Coleman, Vice President of Strategic Programs, sums up his experience with Egnyte in this way:

"We are a global company and with our VPN we were always getting complaints from our employees. The simplicity of Egnyte is a positive and made it easy for everyone to adopt and use. The best thing about Egnyte is that we can easily access and share files from all over the world."