Managing IT On Their Own Was Messy For Buckley Dodds
Buckley Dodds serves a variety of clients, from companies to self-employed workers. For most of their 25 years in business, they relied on a steadily growing on-site server rack — but that wouldn’t work forever. As they grew as a business, their IT environment grew too, adding hardware and expanding as needed, slowly becoming an unmanageable mess.
“Over the years, we’ve had our own server rack develop and get bigger and bigger, and it finally got to a point where it was way too messy,” says Geoff Dodds, Partner, Buckley Dodds. “The server was unwieldy, and it was sort of patched together, and we needed to do something about it.”
This is a common issue for organizations that have been in business since before the cloud became an accessible technology. As an organization grows, they’ll often add on to their IT infrastructure as needed to support that growth — a new server, a new firewall, and cables running all over the place to connect the office as new employees are hired.
This ad-hoc approach to infrastructure management can quickly lead to problems:
- Overly Complicated: With many generations of hardware and software, all from different vendors, it doesn’t take long until one part of the IT environment becomes incompatible with the rest. Whether it’s too old and needs updating or too new and doesn’t run with the legacy environment, the end result is a system that doesn’t do what Buckely Dodds needs.
- Difficult To Support: The more complex an IT environment is, the more difficult it is to support. More hardware and software require more oversight. A larger environment has more opportunities to lag or fail. All of this puts more stress on whoever is taking care of your IT.
That’s precisely what happened with Buckey Dodds’ previous IT support provider. They had configured their infrastructure incorrectly with every additional bit of hardware and software update. There were additional issues that cropped up.
This led to their IT support provider spending most of his time “putting out fires” instead of being able to focus on optimization and future growth. When he decided to retire from the business, Buckley Dodds knew it was time to find an IT company that could provide expert assistance in cleaning up and simplifying their messy server set-up.
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Buckley Dodds Calls Compunet Infotech For Expert Assistance In Cleaning Up Their IT
“The IT person was a contractor and was learning on the fly over the past ten years,” says Geoff. “At a certain point, he had decided to step back, and that’s when we looked for a contractor. We reached out to Compunet and met with the guys there. Initially, they took over our rack and managed that for a while, with the intent that we would switch over to a cloud-based system, which we did last summer.”
Thanks to Compunet’s short-term support for the on-site infrastructure and management of Buyckely Dodd’s migration to the cloud, later on, the firm’s staff has never been more productive. They don’t have to deal with ongoing IT problems and can focus on doing their work.
IT resources have never been as important as they are now during the COVID-19 pandemic. For organizations to stay connected and productive while working remotely, they need the right technologies and processes in place.
Unfortunately, due to how quickly the pandemic developed, many businesses could not prepare for the shift to a remote work setting. Doing so would have required careful planning, methodical execution of new processes, and expert implementation of new technologies — fortunately for Buckley Dodds, Compunet had already moved them to the cloud in 2019.
I would recommend them. Compunet is an operation like ours in size, and I’ve always been one to go with the smaller local guy than the mega-guy across the country.
Compunet Used The Cloud To Pandemic-Proof Buckley Dodds
“That was extremely fortunate, given COVID-19, with everyone having to move to work-from-home,” says Geoff. “We actually, of the sixteen we have working in the office, myself and my partner came into the office every day, but everyone else for a couple of months was working from home. Without that migration to the cloud, it would have been a huge mess.”
Compunet’s direction and support in moving Buckley Dodds to the cloud prepared them for the switch to remote work long before the pandemic. When they had to switch to remote work, it was as simple as sending their employees home with their work devices.
“Everything was in place,” says Geoff. “People grabbed their laptops, went home, and got to work that afternoon. You couldn’t predict that a pandemic would hit, but we were extremely fortunate that we had taken that step.”
Compunet Helps Keep Buckley Dodds Safe From Cyber-Attacks Against Canadian Accountants
To this day, Buckley Dodds relies on Compunet for day-to-day support and long-term direction for their IT. A core priority with their IT is cybersecurity — Geoff and the other members at Buckley Dodds know all too well the cybercrime poses, given that the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada were compromised just last year.
“The CPA organization in Canada was breached in November, and it was a real difficult PR task to try and turn that around,” says Geoff.
They rely on Compunet to guide them in their cybersecurity management. Since partnering with Buckley Dodds, we’ve enhanced their cybersecurity via several modifications and upgrades to their IT:
- We migrated their systems to a Tier 1 Data Centre facility with infrastructure redundancies and robust premises security to keep their data secure.
- We deployed Cisco Meraki firewalls to keep their on-site systems protected against cybercriminals.
With our expert guidance, Buckley Dodds feels more prepared for the inevitable cyber-attacks that will target them in the future. They know their data is secured and backed up, allowing them to stop worrying about cybercrime and focus on their work.
“We rely heavily on them in that regard,” says Geoff. “We’re accountants, not techies, so we want the highest level of security, and we rely on Compunet to give us that comfort.
