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Redox
Wing Eyecare
Large Midwestern public Library
System
Atlas Industrial
Holdings
Professional Indoor Soccer Team The Cleveland Crunch
The Sister's
of St. Francis
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CLIENT PROFILE
Name: Sisters of St. Francis
Industry: Mission
Location: Oldenburg, Indiana
The Sisters
of St. Francis, a Franciscan mission founded in 1885, serves a diverse
array of business, ministerial and educational requirements. Its
members serve in the areas of infant care, early learning, campus
ministry, library and media work, bereavement facilitation, justice
and peace ministry and education of all types: special education;
religious education; adult education; and primary, high school, and
college teaching and administration.
Preparing A
Ministry for the Future
Mission Impossible?
At the
Oldenburg campus of the Sisters of St. Francis, many sisters and staff
use a sizeable network of PCs. In June 2002, realizing their
operations were suffering numerous problems due to inadequate or
nonexistent technology, the sisters were "desperate" for reliable IT
support. The mission's outdated dial-up email accounts caused
significant problems: slow, unreliable service and, if accessed by
multiple users, phone lines were unavailable both in and out of the
mission. Having experienced unsatisfactory assistance in the past,
they went looking for someone they could trust.
The sisters
called PC On Call and, after an initial meeting, asked them to
complete an On Call CheckUp (OCCU) - an analysis and status report on
the entire network. The OCCU also included recommendations for
upgrades, repairs and corrections necessary to provide a stable,
efficient network for both current and future requirements.
Putting
Faith in a Technology Provider
PC On Call
engineers immediately identified the primary reasons for the mission's
communication and productivity problems: an outdated network server
and lack of e-mail server. In addition, the mission was paying nearly
$300 per month for unwieldy dial-up e-mail access, while an
underpowered network server - combined with inefficient configuration
and outdated PCs - slowed all communications. Without a firewall,
virus scanning/repair software or a reliable backup solution, the
entire network was also highly vulnerable to hackers and potentially
unstable.
The mission
agreed to implement PC On Call's first-stage solutions to mitigate
their network problems:
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Add 256 MB
of memory and a new hard drive in the existing server
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Reconfigure the network to improve speed and performance
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Set up a
SOHO firewall and install Norton Anti-Virus Corporate Edition to
insure security and stability
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Upgrade
memory and install Microsoft Office XP software in PCs
The mission
later followed PCOC's recommendation for a new network server, and
engineers installed a Windows 2000 server. Building upon the goals
established earlier - improving stability, security and performance - PCOC engineers also loaded backup software, including a new tape
drive, and created network permissions to control access.
"I knew we needed a network engineer. Now we're able to share
information and communicate in ways we never imagined. I've been so
pleased with the work they do and how professional they are."
-Sister Damien
Hinderer
Sisters of St. Francis
A Promise
Fulfilled
For the
Sisters of St. Francis, the result is a far more reliable, more
productive, user-friendly network - and a blueprint for future IT
requirements.
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The new
Exchange Server and T-1 connection eliminated the costs of several
dedicated phone lines and an outsourced ISP
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Users now
have instant email access from campus and remote locations, and can
collaborate on projects via a public drive
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The
mission's IT coordinator reports far fewer requests for assistance,
and the new server will allow the mission to grow and expand the
network
Having
earned the sisters' trust with professional, cost-conscious service, PCOC now provides eight hours per month of scheduled support as an IT
Partner, in addition to ongoing project work. Upon request, PCOC
engineers are now examining the campus layout in preparation for the
installation of a wireless network in the summer of 2003.
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