Cal Net Technology Group Case Study

Cal Net Technology Group provides consulting for top college preparatory school in Los Angeles

Harvard Westlake, one of the top college preparatory schools in Los Angeles has a student body of 1,597. With such a large student body and faculty, the school needed a firewall solution in order to protect its’ data and students’ information.

Cal Net to the rescue! Harvard Westlake and Cal Net developed a work strategy in order to fulfill the technology problems that the school was experiencing. With Cal Net’s regularly scheduled technical assistance and rotating specialists, Harvard Westlake can now implement technology faster while also keeping costs affordable.

CLICK HERE to view the case study: Cal Net Technology Group provides consulting for top college preparatory school in Los Angeles.

Understanding Your IT Needs: Consulting vs. Staffing

I founded Cal Net Technology Group in 1995 to provide small-to-midsize companies in Southern California with technology consulting and IT computer services. When clients choose Cal Net, they don’t simply hire an IT professional; they gain an insourced IT department. Better than a stand-alone in-house IT department, Cal Net deploys ongoing IT services and project management solutions to help companies communicate effectively and protect their critical data while saving time and money.

Our signature services, TECManage and CoManage, give clients cost-effective options to manage the entire IT function or specialized services, such as ongoing backend infrastructure support or IT systems conversions.

When businesses insource most of their IT needs to Cal Net, they enjoy a better level of service and overall lower costs than they would by retaining full-time employees to meet these needs. Using expert consultants for IT insourcing in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Ventura County can save businesses thousands of dollars. There are only two IT needs that a business might be better off having fulfilled by in-house employees:

1) Many businesses utilize custom-built applications and/or databases that require upgrades and report writing. In these cases it makes more sense for a business to hire one or more in-house programmers to constantly work with these applications.

2) For businesses employing more than 200 computer users, it is advantageous to hire one or more in-house technicians for desktop support and help desk services.

Other than these two positions, all other IT-related needs (including consulting, strategy, infrastructure management, upgrades, and repairs) can be “insourced”  through  focused consultants like Cal Net who can provide expert IT support.

Determining whether you should build your own IT staff or hire a consulting firm is not always an easy task.  We believe that providing potential customers with a transparent overview of each option may be helpful in your decision making process.

Below you will find a comparison to help guide your decision:

CONSULTING

• Cost savings via use of services only as needed.
• Staff of 50 employees with a wide range of expertise  for a fraction of the cost.
• Only pay for actual work.
• Highly trained and skilled professionals available for event the most critical emergencies.
• Smooth, on time and on budget upgrades.
• System discovery processes provide all information needed at any time.
• Full time staff always available (24x7x365).
• All upgrades and implementation project work is done outside of  normal business hours and are carefully scheduled so our service teams can be at their best performance level during these times.  Cal Net charges the same rate for scheduled work, regardless of time of day or week.

STAFFING

• Cost intensive as services are available even when not needed.
• One staff person “assigned” to you, and you as the client only get the knowledge of that particular individual.
• Pay for down time.
• No guarantee that anyone in staff will be able to handle emergency situations resulting in extended down time.
• Extremely expensive and inefficient upgrades with lots of downtime due to learning on the job, and general inexperience with the solutions being implemented.
• Knowledge of system rests in the hands of a few or just one person.
• The absence of one or two members can affect the entire staff or department.
• Regular business hours are worst time to work on server and network systems and many engineers don’t want to work late or over the weekend resulting in rushed or ignored work.  In the event weekend work is done, overtime fees will apply to non-exempt employees.

IT Insourcing On the Rise

There was a time when IT outsourcing was hugely popular. The cost savings were hard to ignore and everyone started to outsource their IT departments overseas.  But there has been a shift and more and more companies are doing what is called “insourcing.” Insourcing is bringing previously outsourced IT-functions back in house.

According to Gartner Inc.’s 2009 CIO Agenda Survey, only 9% of CIOs planned to increase their IT outsourcing this year. Deciding to insource is a huge decision though and one that you wouldn’t want to step back from after all the training, time and cost it will take to get set up in house again. Managed services like those of Cal Net Technology Group’s are like having an insourced IT department but with the cost savings and benefits of an outsourced IT department.

CLICK HERE to read more about IT insourcing.

Lessons in IT Outsourcing

In outsourcing anything, you run both a huge risk and a potentially huge gain.  The latter is obvious and, after all, mainly why many companies outsource divisions of their company.  The former, however, is important to consider, and being that Cal Net Technology Group offers IT outsourcing as one of our many services, I thought I’d take a moment and share an article with you that I found on InfoWorld titled “Painful Lessons from IT Outsourcing.”

The article describes “IT outsourcing’s biggest horror show” in addition to four other examples, but also provides some lessons to be learned–the most important of all being preparedness. The following are the lessons according to the writer of the article, Ephrahim Schwartz:

1. Test your own infrastructure before sending it overseas to go live.

2. Don’t be so blinded by the dollar savings that you fail to realize that your own team is better capable of handling your needs than the group offshore is.

3. Don’t outsource everything (i.e. marketing) to a manufacturer if all they’re really good at is manufacturing.

4. Make sure whoever you are outsourcing to fully understands your business and its needs.

5. Make sure whoever you are outsourcing to has credentials and can actually provide them to you.

And there you have it! Five crucial, albeit obvious, lessons in IT outsourcing. But aren’t some of the biggest lessons in life the most obvious?

CLICK HERE for more details on the lessons learned along with illustrated examples on how they were learned.

Millions in Grants Available for Health IT Communities

If you haven’t been serving the healthcare industry, now is the time.  With a push for electronic health records (EHRs) by the Obama administration, there is a demand for IT experts in the healthcare industry.  Earlier this week, Health and and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that “$235 million in funds are being made available to ‘help us get a better handle on how health information technology will improve the quality care that Americans get.’”  That’s a lot of dough to be floating around and a lot of potential opportunities.  The grants were set up specifically for 15 “beacon communities” which include hospital systems, provider groups and local governments that are already using “cutting-edge technology.”  The grants will work towards further strengthening these communities health IT systems and ultimately pave the way for the use of EHRs.

CLICK HERE to learn more.

Cal Net Technology Group CEO Zack Schuler Will Present Findings for Solution Providers 3.0

LOS ANGELES (November 2009)–Cal Net Technology Group, Southern California’s leader in IT computer services and IT consulting, has announced that Founder and CEO Zack Schuler will Chair Project Nimbus, a collaborative community-based research project sponsored by Channel Insider. Members of the project are comprised of IT industry professionals, the Channel Insider editorial team, and members of HTG Peer groups.

On November 4^th, 2009, Schuler will be co-presenting the team’s Solution Providers 3.0 findings at the Heartland Technology Group’s conference in Orlando, Florida. The presentation will include the best due diligence practices for solution providers and managed services providers in identifying, adopting and building cloud computing practices.

Project Nimbus was developed in order to achieve three goals:

1. Identify the various go-to-market channel models for cloud computing and how they apply to solution providers.
2. Explore the issues, opportunities, concerns and obstacles in cloud computing as they relate to the current and future IT reseller and managed services channel.
3. Provide the channel community with directional guidance on navigating into the cloud computing era.

“As the Solution Provider 3.0 model develops, largely due to our collective influence, Project Nimbus aims to keep everyone apprised as to what the future landscape entails,” remarked Schuler. “I am personally looking forward to helping everyone succeed in this next era of computing.”

About Cal Net Technology Group

Founded in 1995, Cal Net Technology Group provides Southern California’s businesses with technology solutions expertise ranging from outsourced I.T. services to ongoing support and consultation. Their signature services include TECManage, designed to provide a cost-effective option for companies who need the services of full-time I.T personnel, and COManage, best for those in need of part-time and support services.

Advice On IT Outsourcing

I just read a great article on “The Benefits of Infrastructure Outsourcing” by Phil Sayer of CIO.com. The article discusses reasons for outsourcing, issues that arise in doing so & who it works best for.

The continuous economic turmoil has resulted in a lot of companies seeking to outsource their IT departments. Generally, IT infrastructures are not the core competency of a company, which is why it’s beneficial to outsource in order to focus their efforts on actual differentiators. The problem is that many companies outsource to achieve immediate cost savings without taking into consideration the quality and flexibility of the service, in addition to failing to measure the level of service actually needed, resulting in unsatisfactory experiences.

One bit of advice that the article offered was this: “…avoid the need for transformation by fixing your processes before you outsource. This makes sense anyway – the old adage is still true: “If you outsource a mess you will end up with a more expensive mess.” Retain flexibility and plan for disruptive changes, such as rapid changes in external business conditions and organizational changes resulting from divestiture or M&A activity.”

Now that’s some solid advice! Click below to read the full article:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135523/The_Benefits_of_Infrastructure_Outsourcing?taxonomyId=