Story · Insurance · Simplification
They thought they had twenty servers. They had forty-one.
A large client merged with a smaller one. The smaller company came with an in-house IT person, and the merged business adopted his environment wholesale. After that, nothing moved. Every decision got postponed, and postponed decisions compound.
Offshore helpdesks subcontract the hands-on work to someone who has never seen your network. Every piece of gear we install is built and installed by a Midwest IT employee.
Local or offshore, honestly Gold Star survey"Matt was very helpful and friendly."
Melanie, insurance agencyMeet MattThe situation
We were brought in specifically to simplify, which is an unusual brief and a welcome one. Most engagements start with something broken. This one started with something merely accumulated.
The client believed they had around twenty virtual servers. An actual inventory found forty-one, not counting physical hardware.
Nobody was being careless. Each of those servers had been stood up for a reason at some point, and nobody had ever been given the job of asking whether the reason still applied.
What we did
We inventoried everything first and made the number visible, because forty-one is an argument all by itself.
Then every person in the company was evaluated for what they actually needed, as opposed to what had been provisioned for them at some point in the past.
We mapped a roadmap across roughly a year, sequenced so the business kept working throughout. Custom software was migrated, with an outside programmer brought in to make it capable of running in the cloud rather than on a server in a closet.
Under eighteen months later they were running on four.
"Nobody sets out to run forty-one servers. You get there by never asking whether you still need the last one."
How the partners put itWhat changed
ResolvedForty-one down to four. Less hardware to replace, less to patch, less to back up, less to lose, and a far smaller surface for anything to go wrong on.
We were let go afterwards for reasons unrelated to the work, right as it completed. We tell it anyway, because the shape of it is what matters: somebody has to be given the job of asking whether the reason still applies.
Order the internet circuit the week the lease is signed. Carriers take six to twelve weeks. Nothing else on a move fails as often.
The relocation checklist Did you knowA backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a plan. Ask for the date of the last tested restore.
What to actually testQuestions people ask about this
How does a business end up with servers it does not know about?
Mergers, mostly, and staff turnover. Each one made sense when it was built. Nobody owns the question of when it stops making sense.
Is fewer servers always better?
Fewer things that have to work is always better. Whether the answer is cloud, consolidation or simply switching things off depends on what those servers are actually doing.
How do we find out what we really have?
An inventory. Not a conversation, an inventory. The number is almost always higher than the estimate.
"Ryan was a fantastic help with my several issues and even identified other issues I was unaware of and resolved them as well."
Ethan, law firmMeet Ryan- A technician who knows your setup takes every request. Not a dispatcher, not a queue.
- Every closed ticket is surveyed and a partner reads every response.
- 99.5% of surveys come back positive.
- Family-owned since 2005. 21 years in the same corner of Wisconsin, not going anywhere.
"Thanks for the hard work. I was kept informed with regular updates until the concern was resolved."
Jeff, insurance brokerageHow many servers do you have?
If the answer is roughly, that is worth an afternoon of somebody's time.
Talk to a partnerTalk to a partner, not a sales script.
Tell us what is going on. A partner will call you back the same business day, look at what you have, and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit. No pricing pressure, no pitch deck.