2 page Case Study - Posted 10/24/2008

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Lee Company

Construction Firm Increases Productivity with New Server Solution

Lee Company provides mechanical and maintenance services to businesses and homeowners across the United States. Eager to upgrade its technology to add new capabilities, Lee implemented Windows® Essential Business Server 2008 on Dell PowerEdge servers. The company can now deploy business-enhancing applications and streamline technology management. IT staff are more productive and remote workers can easily access the information they need with enhanced security.

Business Needs

Lee Company provides heating, cooling, plumbing, construction, and facilities maintenance services to businesses and homeowners far beyond its Tennessee base. The family-owned company launched in 1944 by L. Leon Lee is in its sixty-fourth year and has grown to 550 employees, with customers across the United States.

To maintain leadership in a highly competitive industry, Lee Company management realized that it needed to invest in new technology. In addition to improving customer management and enhancing collaboration among employees, Lee Company hoped to update its Microsoft Dynamics® SL enterprise resource planning application (ERP). “We had a dozen five-year-old servers running an eight-year-old operating system,” says Tom Goddard, Director of Information Technology for Lee Company. “We wanted to upgrade our ERP application and roll out customer relationship management and collaboration software, but we couldn’t take on such projects without upgrading our infrastructure and freeing our IT staff.”

The IT staff spent its time “firefighting”—reacting to server and user problems. “We had too many servers for a company of our size and were reactionary in managing those servers,” Goddard says. “We waited for a service to fail before we looked at event logs. We just did not have the time or tools to manage our servers proactively.”

More than half of the company’s 550 employees work on job sites or as field service technicians. Remote workers often had difficulty connecting to the corporate network using remote-access services and the Lotus Notes messaging system. “Notes was inconsistent with the rest of our infrastructure and difficult to administer, generating a lot of help-desk tickets,” Goddard says.

Solution

When Goddard learned about Windows® Essential Business Server 2008 Premium, he realized that it was a good fit with Lee’s needs. “I saw a good connection between what was in this package and what we needed to do,” Goddard says. “With Windows Essential Business Server 2008, we’d get there a lot faster, for a lot less money.” Windows Essential Business Server 2008 packages management, messaging, security, and database software in one integrated solution. Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 data management software, which is included in the Premium edition, would provide excellent database performance for the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics SL. 

We couldn't have tackled these new projects without first freeing our IT staff and implementing a more sophisticated, easily managed technology infastructure. Tom Goddard Director of information Technology Lee Company

Goddard’s staff uses the Administration Console in Windows Essential Business Server 2008 as the single point of access to its entire IT environment. Remote workers use the Remote Web Workplace feature, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 mobility features, and Microsoft Forefront™ Threat Management Gateway security to easily access the company network from outside the company with enhanced security.

Using the Hyper-V™ virtualization technology that is supported by Windows Essential Business Server 2008, Goddard runs the software on two servers: one runs the management server, and the other runs the security and messaging servers. Lee Company has also virtualized its database and ERP applications. Lee uses Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to help manage its virtual machines." Hyper-V is so reliable; we don’t give it a second thought,” says Goddard.

Windows Essential Business Server 2008 runs on Dell PowerEdge R805 servers containing Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. “The R805 servers are ideal for virtualization, with lots of memory and processors,” Goddard says. “I budgeted for three servers and was able to buy four, with money left over.”

With a low-maintenance infrastructure, the Lee Company can now deploy Windows SharePoint® Services for better collaboration; Microsoft Dynamics CRM for better customer relationship management; and field service solutions.

Benefits

By implementing Windows Essential Business Server 2008 on Dell servers, Lee Company has been able to move forward with business-enhancing applications, which ultimately improves its competitiveness.

• Foundation for new business capabilities. Once Windows SharePoint Services is implemented, staff will be able to publish Microsoft Dynamics SL data to SharePoint sites, which will let remote users participate in key business decisions from wherever they are, using only an Internet browser. “We couldn’t have tackled these new projects without first freeing up our IT staff and implementing a more sophisticated, easily managed technology infrastructure,” Goddard says.
  
  
• Higher staff productivity. Goddard’s staff monitors all the company’s technology through a single console, enabling more proactive management. “Every morning, I get a complete picture of system health. Software updates that would have taken eight hours a week if we were doing them now take two hours a week,” Goddard says. The increased stability of the new software has reduced the number of help-desk tickets by four hours each week—a U.S.$8,000 annual savings. The increased stability makes end users, too, more productive, by at least 15 minutes per week—a $24,000 savings in just three months. Remote workers keep up with e-mail messages and meetings from job sites, enabling them to respond promptly and get more done.
  
  
• Enhanced competitiveness. Using Remote Web Workplace, field employees will have easy access to e-mail messages, contacts, calendars, and corporate applications. “Our remote employees will be more productive and better able to take care of customers,” Goddard says.
  
  
• Lower costs. By the end of 2008, Lee Company will have reduced 12 servers to four. Hyper-V virtualization technology also helped the company save money. “By deploying Hyper-V instead of VMware, we saved about $15,000 in licensing fees,” Goddard says.

Lee Company installed Windows Essential Business Server 2008 in less than one month. “It would have taken us three to four months to deploy the individual programs,” Goddard says. “That saved an extra quarter of labor that my staff used to add value to the business.”

Windows Essential Server Solutions
Windows Essential Business Server 2008 is part of the Windows Essential Server Solutions family, designed to help small and midsize businesses boost productivity and growth. Based on the latest innovations, Windows Essential Server Solutions dramatically simplify the deployment, ongoing management, and use of server technology. For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/ebs