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Alliance Member: GuardEra Access Solutions, Inc.
Customer: McHugh Construction

"We realized that our servers will not be able to keep pace with our growth, so we went to GuardEra because of their reputation for taking action to anticipate and remediate problems like ours."
- Richard Shen, McHugh Construction

ABOUT MCHUGH CONSTRUCTION
James McHugh Construction Co. has been a leader in making personnel-related inroads as well as construction innovations. The company was the first in Chicago to bring minorities into the ironworkers' union and first to enter a joint venture with a minority contractor. It is not uncommon for laborers to move up the ladder through the organization; conversely, almost every corporate employee has spent time working in the field.

Key Benefits of GuardEra's Deployment of a Server Virtualization Solution

• Consolidated IT equipment footprint to a quarter of a single server rack; saving space and reducing utility costs
• Created environment where adding new application servers now takes minutes, rather than days
• Empowered company with high-confidence disaster recovery capabilities
• Improved the overall application performance and workforce efficiency

THE CHALLENGE
While scaling up their IT infrastructure to support unprecedented growth, McHugh Construction began to experience server sprawl—as IT infrastructure equipment outgrew available space. The company not only recognized the need to address their immediate issue of diminishing real estate, but also sought to better prepare for both continued growth and disaster recovery.

As a trusted IT solution provider to McHugh Construction for several years—over which time they deployed security solutions, system intrusion prevention, digital document management capabilities, and industry applications—GuardEra was again called upon to solve the company's latest technology challenges.

THE SOLUTION
"A lot of businesses come to us with organically developed hardware and network environments that are time-consuming to manage, difficult to protect, and cost-intensive to upgrade," said Mike Panno, CEO of GuardEra. "In these cases, we look to deliver solutions with an eye towards cost and convenience, while ensuring performance or security at the same time." GuardEra deployed VMWare virtual infrastructure on AMD Opteron powered Sun Microsystems servers, which combined, offered the highest performance available. The migration was completed in a phased roll-out in less than three weeks—with no disruption to the business—and continues to be backed by GuardEra's renowned support services.

"Our method is to first understand our clients' business and workflow, and then implement the right set of technologies to streamline their unique, proprietary business processes and meet other critical requirements," added Mr. Panno. "This approach ultimately equipped McHugh Construction with an updated IT infrastructure that was best suited to support both current and future needs."

THE BENEFITS
By using virtualization to run multiple workloads on fewer servers, GuardEra was able to bring server sprawl under control. Additionally, this new IT infrastructure reduced future needs for more physical servers during McHugh Construction's continued growth. The GuardEra solution also served to significantly reduce downtime by making high-availability and disaster recovery solutions simpler, more reliable and cost-effective.

"GuardEra's managed services significantly improved McHugh's current server performance and provided a cost-effective path to scale in the future. Most importantly, we know their management team has one less thing to worry about at night," added Mr. Panno.

"We saw immediate results. During a recent power failure, our new virtual servers allowed us to power down non-mission-critical devices while keeping our network up, conserving energy and kept our business going during the outage. There's no way we could have done that prior to VM." said Richard Shen of McHugh Construction.

ABOUT GUARDERA
GuardEra's expert services help organizations in regulated environments achieve significant advantages in cost, convenience, and compliance by securing access to their most critical information assets. Unlike security consulting firms that only provide initial assessments, GuardEra specializes in putting remediation plans into action by building and managing secure IT environments. For more information call (847) 348-0600 or visit us on the web at GuardEra.com.

ABOUT THISA 
THISA is a national network of regional solution providers dedicated to providing a range of industries high-value solutions that reduce costs, improve confidence, and increase compliance. 

THISA helps its clients address today's critical IT issues and fulfill all IT infrastructure, security and compliance requirements. From strategic risk analysis to storage and continuity issues to entire enterprise infrastructure design, THISA offers the highest level of technical expertise and a strong commitment to its customers.