THE CLIENT
Diversitat is a not-for-profit (NFP) charitable community service organisation that supports culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and the disadvantaged and the vulnerable in Victoria’s Barwon region. Services include training and education, aged support, enterprises and arts, plus services to support people around the community, youths, those with a disability and settlement in Australia.
"We do a lot of processes online – as do many organisations – so an internet outage for a day is not good. The only way we’re going to catch that up is if we employ extra staff for the next day, which means it’s directly costing us money. The reliability of Viatek’s ITC service is very good, as is its competitive pricing.”
THE MANAGED SERVICES AGREEMENT HAS ENABLED DIVERSITAT TO REDUCE THE COST OF MANAGING ITS IT SUPPORT REQUIREMENTS BY 30%
THE CHALLENGE
With no in-house IT expertise, Diversitat had many challenges in managing the IT infrastructure cross its 14 sites (13 in Geelong and one in Colac), including ageing servers and networking equipment. On top of this, the organisation has continued to expand rapidly to meet community needs.
Diversitat was looking for a Managed Services provider it could partner with that offered; fast, reliable responses to day-to-day support requests, and reliable availability and backup of data across all sites
They also wanted their Managed Services partner to provide expert advice on IT Infrastructure and networks, to ensure the network was running optimally.
As an NFP, Diversitat was looking to reduce IT overheads to meet its tight budget, while still achieving all the above.
AS AN NFP, DIVERSITAT WAS LOOKING TO REDUCE IT OVERHEADS TO MEET ITS TIGHT BUDGET, WHILE STILL ACHIEVING ALL THE ABOVE.
The chosen Managed Services partner also needed to be able to work within Diversitat’s time frames, which often relied externally on government grants, donations and sponsorship.
THE SOLUTION
After comparing offerings and costs, Diversitat first began working with Viatek Technology in 2012.
Since then, the solutions have included a Managed Services Agreement, a server-refresh project with nine new servers, a workstation-refresh project replacing ageing desktops with 73 desktop mini or laptop computers, and a WatchGuard router project with 11 WatchGuard Devices and NBD hardware replacement plus three-year total security suite. The Viatek Managed Services Agreement includes:
- 7am-6pm Monday to Friday access to the National IT Support Desk
- Onside support from Service Engineers every business day
- Remote server monitoring (proactive monitoring and alerts on 31 servers)
- Server-backup monitoring
THE RESULTS
The Managed Services Agreement has enabled Diversitat to reduce the cost of managing its IT support requirements by 30%, achieving its main criterion of reducing IT costs to enable funds to be directed into services and programs.
Overall, Viatek’s solutions have improved the speed and connectivity of Diversitat’s IT environment, greatly reducing outages, and improving intersite communication. At Training HQ, in Ryan Place, Geelong, this includes the VETtrak-hosted site, Canvas, model (e-rolls), Outlook and T drive.
"At the moment, we rely on email a lot in exchanging information. Other than that, we have S Drive to share our data between sites, and lastly, we have intranet to access the information we need across the board.”
Viatek’s solutions have also improved Diversitat’s network security from hackers and cyber threats, as well as allowing the organisation to expand and develop new services.
Brian McMahon, Diversitat’s Financial Controller, says, “ New technology, with several years’ warranty, replacing older servers, desktop computers and routers is faster, has better security profiles and needs less maintenance, which reduces both costs and downtime.”
In refreshing its servers, Diversitat has consolidated server numbers while also migrating some legacy physical servers into a new visualised environment. This has reduced upgrading servers’ costs, and simultaneously lowered the cost of managing the IT Infrastructure while making it easier to maintain.
The 7am-6pm Monday to Friday access to the national help desk ensures any issues are resolved quickly.
Michael Stephens of the Vines Road training campus in Hamlyn Heights, says, “The help desk are good and l find them efficient and patient.”
The access to on-site support from engineers has also been a benefit. Robyn Martinez, of the Healthy Living Centre, says, “From my perspective they have been very helpful. I like it when they come and check on us and fix things up; we do not have to wait long, and we are given priority listing when something is urgent.”
Diversitat also relies on recommendations from Viatek as its IT partner, removing the need to have any in-house IT function.
“Viatek staff have been great in recommending alternative or new ways in working certain tasks, for example, we had requested to install
a projector in the later stage of the new building construction, but due the ceiling being so high, Viatek suggested a big-screen TV instead to eliminate the cost of putting cable through the walls.”
– Lloyd Tan | Diversitat’s Healthy Living Centre in Norlane
