Case Study: Infrastructure Migration for DiGesare Mechanical, Inc.
What started in 1948 as Leo DiGesare Plumbing and Heating, DiGesare Mechanical is now the largest privately held mechanical construction company in Upstate New York. The company remains a family business and prides itself as a full service, union shop mechanical contractor with a well-trained labor force consisting of highly skilled superintendents, foremen, journeymen plumbers, pipe fitters and welders.
“They listened. They asked the right questions, even those that magnified the company’s lack of preparedness. But it was never about selling more services or software. It was about creating priorities and addressing issues before they became significant problems..”
— Matt DiGesare, DiGesare Mechanical, Inc.
The IT Challenges: Managing Growth and Outdated Infrastructure
As a family business, it’s common for one person to wear many hats. For Matt DiGesare, Contract Administrator at DiGesare Mechanical, this meant having to play the role of IT help desk support in addition to his other responsibilities. Over time, as the company grew, naturally so did his responsibilities—giving him less time to devote to the company’s ever-growing IT needs.
As a quick fix, DiGesare would reach out to different IT vendors to address specific issues as they arose. However, this was an expensive and fragmented way of working. The idea of establishing an IT department within the company was another option, but not something DiGesare wanted to pursue. When the time came to update the aging infrastructure (server, switches and access points) and move to a Cloud-based system, DiGesare sought a different solution to ease the day-to-day administrative burdens and improve support for end-user issues.
The Solution: Comprehensive Managed IT
On April 1, 2019, DiGesare Mechanical outsourced its work to one full solutions provider—cb20. Having held the reins of IT for so long, DiGesare decided to hand over the responsibilities as the scope of the company’s needs exceeded what Matt alone could address. DiGesare found a proactive partner in cb20—one that included him in the decision-making process, while helping to guide necessary changes at a pace that made the most sense for the company.
The work accomplished to date has been robust, including:
- The migration of the on-premises email from an end-of-life platform to a cloud hosted Microsoft 365 environment with Exchange on-line protection, which was carefully configured with DMARC/DKIM to better protect their messaging environment.
- The migration from an on-premises server infrastructure to new hardware and operating systems to ensure Business Continuity and stability.
- The implementation of a new Microsoft Remote Desktop Services server (formerly known as Terminal Server) to host on-premises applications for remote employees.
- Implementation of enterprise grade, cloud-managed firewall, wireless access points, and network switching infrastructure.
- Establishment of a regular lifecycle management policy for replacing equipment at regular intervals in perpetuity to ensure reliability and efficiency with the added benefit of proper budgeting.
- Replacement of an end-of-life operating systems (Windows 7) with new, modern hardware and Windows 10 Professional devices.
- Solutions for remote office trailer environment used on job sites to have modern cloud-hosted firewall that could use cellular modem for remote connectivity/VPN back to office, improving better end-user experience.
Thanks to quarterly Business Reviews, DiGesare is able to stay abreast of the company’s IT needs, consider key topics and new ideas, forecast IT expenditures, and feel confident that the company is prepared to address unforeseen issues, while maintaining fiscal responsibility.
The Outcome
And the outcome? DiGesare describes it as running like a “well-oiled machine.” Communication with the Support Center is clear, timely, and detailed. Employees with IT questions can go directly to cb20 and track who is having an issue and how it was addressed. Issues are almost always addressed the same day, and the system has become much more reliable, with virtually no downtime.
“cb20 works like they are sitting right here in our offices. They have an integrity that cannot be taught. You either have it or you don’t. In some ways, they act more like members of our work family than business partner. And that means a lot for a family-owned company like ours.”
— Matt DiGesare
About cb20
cb20 is a technology solutions provider of choice for organizations that value IT and Managed Services expertise and category-leading customer service. We partner with the world’s leading hardware and software companies to deliver end-to-end consulting, implementation and managed services across the U.S. With world-class engineering talent and 30+ years of experience cb20 delivers confidence, security, a true sense of control and the highest-quality, end-to-end customer experience in the business.