Council staff at Ruapehu District Council (RDC) now have much faster responses on their desktop and laptop PCs, fewer system down times or service interruptions and enhanced helpdesk support when they do have issues, thanks to a managed services partnership with Eagle Technology.
In addition, Eagle has helped RDC consolidate and virtualise their servers to provide a foundation for business continuity.
“While we didn’t have any major outages or failures before,” says Peter Till, deputy chief executive/district engineer at RDC, “we felt we were vulnerable. But now, with the virtualised servers, fail-over routines in place and our storage issues sorted, we have a new sense of peace of mind.”
“The service we have received from Eagle has been exemplary,” says David Hammond, RDC’s chief executive.
“With Eagle as our managed services partner, we have been able to bring our systems up-to-date and plan for future growth. From a finance point of view, the exercise has been no more or less costly than before. But from a performance, reliability and confidence standpoint, the whole project has been extremely beneficial.”
Eagle’s managed services partnership has also given RDC the confidence to move ahead with their IT initiatives.
“Before we engaged with Eagle” says Hammond, “we were hesitant to make major decisions on our IT infrastructure. As a result, we added components to our network only as required. This approach met our immediate needs for the most part, but didn’t address any long term requirements. As we became more and more reliant on IT for council activities, the gap between what we needed and what we had became wider.”
To address these and other issues, RDC prepared an RFP that, rather than specifying an exact solution, laid out the facts and requested that vendors reply with strategies to help RDC resolve their IT challenges. Eagle’s proposal was the successful bid.
“Eagle instinctively understood our situation,” says Hammond.
“Our best contracts are based around relationships and good-will. I recognised that would be possible in the Eagle team. Their approach was ‘down-to-Earth’ and they were quite passionate and highly engaged. We felt that they were more interested in helping us achieve our IT goals rather than simply fulfilling a contract.
“We liked that fact that they had been in business for decades and had a track record of success with clients in local and central government. We also liked the fact that our distance from the main cities would not be a problem for the Eagle team. They would make sure we got the advice and expertise we needed.”
“We now have a relationship based on trust,” concludes Hammond. “If we have a request or change, they simply do it instead of running through a series of contract variations. They know what they are doing and we have full confidence that they have our best interests at heart.”