Pomona Catholic - 300-user high school and middle school client (2016 - present)

The client’s story

In 2016, we were hired by a school that provides education to middle school and high school students. We were asked to consult on how to stabilize their entire system. They had problems with Internet outages, network outages, server performance issues, wifi issues, backup programs, virus protection updates, and many other issues. We worked with the Director of Development to make many improvements to the school’s system. At the time of writing this case study in 2018, this task of stabilizing the system is mostly complete. However, there are still on-going work currently in progress and is described below.

Case Study - An unstable system

Problem

The school was constantly putting out fires. When one was put out another would start. The were lots of problems but the problems differed from week to week.  This week's issue was an Internet outage. Next week users were not able to access the mapped drives. The week after users were not able to open Quickbooks. Next it was a power outage. After that, users in the 2nd floor hall was not about to connect to the wifi and so forth. Management was constantly dealing with problems with no end in sight.

Solution

The system problems were caused by many different factors. Some were configuration issues. Some were related to the school outgrowing the original system design. Others were equipment problems. All were technical in nature which was why management needed someone like us.

The two biggest obstacles that management faced were identifying the root causes and understanding how to address them. The solution was to help the school with these two parts. Once management understood both of these, they were better equipped to deal with the situation. They stopped focusing on the smaller fires and worked to put out the main fires. As the bigger fires were put out, there were less smaller ones.

Result 

Although this system is still a work in progress, the system is running much better since we started helping this client. Most of their daily fires are gone. We are now helping them to improve the situation for the long-haul.