BNC Managed IT SERVICES

Company Profile: Larkin Centre

The Larkin Centre, established in 1986 is part of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions national network of 38 centres. The role of the Centre is multifaceted, offering the following community based services, welfare rights Information/advocacy, adult guidance to assist people develop their skills, a Job club to equip people prepare for employment, information and support on self-employment, a crèche facility in addition to a community based adult education program.
Website: www.larkinctr.com

The Larkin Centre’s IT department couldn’t keep up with the maintenance required to keep the training centre’s administrative applications up and running. Without reliable access to the systems that run these applications, staff would be unable to schedule classes, process tuition, pay salaries or conduct the daily operations that run the training centres. At the same time, staff wouldn’t be able to conduct necessary research or access teaching aides. Unfortunately, managing the distributed network was far too labour intensive, making even the most basic tasks a major management pain.

Solution:
The Larkin Centre deployed BNC’s managed services suite. Through this suite, tasks that were traditionally the responsibility of network administrators have now become automated and simplified. Windows updates, virus-scans, spyware and malware sweeps, system health checks, backup status and efficiency checks take place automatically. Reporting at set intervals back to our Network Operating Centre (NOC) and managed through a central management console, our trained engineers are at hand to promptly deal with any alerts that threaten the stability of your network before they actually happen 24/7. All of this is done remotely making the difficulty that comes with managing a widely dispersed network redundant. In essence, this management tool provides you with an electronic network administrator that never sleeps, works weekends, can accurately predict imminent failures and is never absent due to illness.

Des Cooney, systems administrator for the Larkin Unemployment Centre comments, “We were constantly running around the office putting out fires. It was labour intensive and grossly inefficient way to manage and administrative tasks like installing new software, issuing a patch and deploying a new business application took weeks to complete, requiring BNC system engineers to physically call and go to each PC or server and manually perform the maintenance. Often, the lag in issuing patches would lead to downtime and leave the network open to security threats. As a result, the administration staff would be unable to schedule classes, process tuition, pay salaries or conduct the daily operations that run the training centre". Problem

"Network Uptime is a huge focus for us and we need to make sure they have the tools they need to do that. Our machines need to be available at all times. The biggest threat to the network’s security was the centres own employees and students who install software on their systems – knowingly and unknowingly – without understanding how the programs could slow performance. Spyware was an issue, opening up connections to remote servers that, while typically benign, posed a major security risk to our network."

"Now, most issues are fixed within a few minutes in real-time rather than with the end user on the phone for a long time. “Not only have we eliminated the wait but we’re in a better position to educate the end user about what caused the issue and how to prevent it from happening in the future."

"Tuesdays used to be a nightmare as Microsoft released the latestWindows security patches, taking full three days to travel around centre manually installing the patches. Now, through BNC Managed Service solution its all done automatically out of teaching hours. With the time saved on basic administrative tasks, and can now concentrate on more proactive projects within the centre."

Solution
The Larkin Centre deployed a remote and automatic managed service solution from BNC that gives us complete visibility into all workstations and servers on the network from a Central Web-based management console. Now, BNC IT staff is able to conduct preventative maintenance on systems without leaving there office. Instead of simply reacting to problems access to workstations and servers from a central management console – regardless of the physical location of the systems was possible. Now, basic tasks like issuing patches, updating software, monitoring performance and setting up new employee profiles are done remotely without my involvement leaving, enabling preventative maintenance and the ability to identify and eliminate performance and security risks before they become major issues.

Key Benefits - BNC Manged IT Services
  • systems and applications are more reliable and available, providing the administrative staff with the tools and information they need to run the school

  • New employees’ user profiles, passwords and mailboxes are set up remotely, allowing them to get trained and started faster

  • Help desk issues are resolved remotely and in real time, improving the average resolution time from several hours to several minutes

  • The IT staff has a more accurate inventory of hardware and software on the network, improving performance and security