The Client
Midwest automotive service supplier
The Challenge
This customer initially engaged another firm to help design a thin client system to meet its needs. After one year, several cost overruns, and poor total system functionality, the organization became frustrated. They decided to bring in competing firms to ascertain the nature of the problem.
Haverstick Consulting was selected for the engagement based on our activities in initial meetings. We worked with members of the executive staff to better understand their definition of system functionality. They stated their dissatisfaction with their system in three areas; performance, scalability, and reliability.
Performance
Great emphasis is placed on utilization of human assets at this site. Members of field level management are constantly pulled to perform other core tasks. Office management is seen as a secondary responsibility at this level. Managers normally have very narrow windows of opportunity for use of this system. When they do, the system must be available and capable of handling requests from up to ninety percent of the organization simultaneously. Slow network performance is intolerable.
Scalability
This organization is inclined toward aggressive expansion. Their stated goals over the next three years include a ten percent expansion in storefront per year. This customer expressed a desire for a “plug and go” expansion scheme. They also wanted to reduce the amount of administrative load placed on their internal information technology staff, thus reducing requirements for staff additions in the future.
Reliability
The executive management team has become accustomed to using information technology to solve problems and gather data. System downtime has become critical for this customer. They expressed a desire to have predictable maintenance windows and limited redundancy within their system. Cost played a major role in evaluating system reliability.
The Haverstick Approach
Haverstick Consulting uses a four-step, problem-solving methodology. We partner with our customers to resolve problems. We spent several hours working to accurately record performance.
During the initial planning phase of the network, we focused on the performance of existing Windows NT and Citrix-based systems. We used industry standard performance-monitoring tools to gather data about all aspects of the network. We established a baseline of performance so we could quantify our gains. Using the data gathered, we made several small, in-flight, changes to the infrastructure and backend servers. The modifications resulted in quantifiable improvements.
We worked with our customer to explain its network to them as a whole system. In the past, other vendors had attempted to focus their efforts in a single area, Citrix systems, Windows NT systems, and network infrastructure components for example. Because these approaches only deal with the symptoms of a problem and not its root, they are likely to fail. Our breadth of knowledge in network infrastructure components, network operating systems, and client server applications gives us a perspective that our competition cannot match.
We recommended a cross-functional, incremental solution. We rated increments in order of impact to the customer. Each increment of the solution was capable of standing on its own. This allowed the customer to prioritize its solution as necessary. We recommended improvements to network security, bandwidth expansion, bandwidth monitoring and management, server system redundancy, and client deployment. After approval of these recommendations, we worked closely with the client’s information technology team to implement these changes.
The Result
This client now enjoys an expandable, reliable, and secure thin client network. Members of the client’s management team now frequently comment on network performance. Haverstick Consulting assisted this customer in realizing its goals of performance, reliability, and scalability.
The CEO of this organization was pleased enough with our work to personally thank a member of the Haverstick Consulting executive staff. | 
