Imagis

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of Link High Technologies, an IT management company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Imagis?

We needed help with migrating from an on-premise email system to Office 365. We had some unique challenges that required specialized expertise, so we decided to call Imagis.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Before working with Imagis, we were using three on-premise exchange servers, and they were an old, 2013 version. We also had about 125 employees using those servers, and the average mailbox size was 130–150 gigs.

That situation was Imagis’ starting point. Thus, they initially assessed everyone’s mailbox size and gathered our requirements. Those requirements included not having any downtimes, not even during the weekends, so it became a challenge. Ultimately, they migrated us to Microsoft 365.

What is the team composition?

We worked with an account manager and the lead project engineer from Imagis. Maybe more people worked in the background, but those two people were the ones that joined the weekly calls throughout the project.

How did you come to work with Imagis?

I called Microsoft’s offices in New York and asked for companies certified in Office 365 migrations. We wanted to work with someone local to New York so that we wouldn’t have language barriers and they could come to our offices in case there was some on-site work needed. We found that Imagis’ account manager was in New York, so we went with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent close to $23,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around July 2021, and we finished at the beginning of October 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Imagis used their expertise and experience to work in the background, so there was very little, if any, downtime during the migration. Our on-premise exchange servers were outdated, and if they failed the vulnerability tests, we wouldn’t be able to renew our cyber insurance. Now, we’re on Microsoft 365, so we don’t worry about any of that. The burden is now on Microsoft, and if their servers were to go down, there’s not much that we could do about it.

How did Imagis perform from a project management standpoint?

Imagis’ project management was great. We had weekly Thursday calls over Microsoft Teams to talk about status updates, and we communicated via email. They were very responsive and always returned our emails within a few hours, even during the weekend.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Imagis had the expertise we needed. Whenever we asked if they’d done something, every other company said that they didn’t, but they could try — that wasn’t a great answer for us. However, Imagis had experience working on similar projects of the same size and scope, so they always answered yes.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they met every expectation and deadline. I think that one of Imagis’ secrets is to underpromise. They told us that the project would take 4–5 months, but they did it in three.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very upfront. I asked them about the limitations of this project, and they provided them in writing for us to work around them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief compliance officer for a contract service organization that provides imaging expertise and reading for the pharmaceutical industry in pursuit of clinical trials.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Imagis?

Imagis assisted us and continues to assist us with our Microsoft Azure Cloud Services implementation.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Imagis provides us with web hosting and cloud hosting services. Prior to working with Imagis, we didn’t have the cloud (Microsoft Azure implementation). They were responsible for delivering the entire cloud service solution, integrating our existing applications to work on the cloud, and allowing us to manage data via the cloud. That work is ongoing. 

Another deliverable was to integrate SharePoint, which we hadn’t used previously as part of the Office 365 suite of tools. They built out libraries within SharePoint for us.

Imagis also maintains our network security. They consolidated our network security passwords and firewalls, and they provide other security services for our internal network and our clients.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 4–5 people from Imagis, but we work a lot with Sam (Integrator & CEO) and Ilya (Client Success Manager), our project manager who oversees our projects. We’ve also worked with a few resources who have the technical expertise to implement.

How did you come to work with Imagis?

The principles at my company selected Imagis. I don’t know how they chose them. However, I can say that I’ve been very satisfied with their work. I think they were a good company to hire out.

How much have you invested with them?

The rough estimate of all of the projects is around $200,000. We also keep them on a monthly retainer for the security and networking services. As far as I’m concerned, they’re competitively priced.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Imagis in June 2019, and the engagement is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We maintained timelines for the projects, and Imagis was successful in meeting them. In terms of success metrics, all of the projects had requirements, so the fulfillment of those requirements was the basic metric for any of the deliverables within the specific project. 

As far as the ongoing service, we have a service level agreement with Imagis to put some metrics around their overall performance. We meet quarterly to go over metrics, such as their response time to questions or issues, and they are definitely within spec as far as our service-level agreement is concerned.

How did Imagis perform from a project management standpoint?

Overall, the communication with the people at Imagis is very good. They are very open and approachable, and they are easy to get a hold of. I don’t think there was ever a time when I had to go looking for them or they weren’t responsive within a few hours of my inquiring. I’m on the West Coast, and they’ll respond to me when it’s late in the evening for them on the East Coast.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Imagis is a very knowledgeable group of people. Like I said, from a price standpoint, they are very competitive. I also didn’t have any issues with them in terms of meeting their timelines. We’ve come to rely on them and their tactical expertise, predominantly in the cloud and security space. I would definitely recommend them for those services.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. Imagis have been very responsive, and they’re the first to admit if something that we’re asking them to do is outside of their expertise. They also recommend others that might be able to provide the solutions or capabilities that they can’t.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I think this would be true for any vendor, but make sure that the expectations are clearly communicated. The Imagis team is very flexible — they will change very quickly if need be — but from a cost perspective, it’s always good to have your requirements understood as early as possible. This will allow you to avoid making last-minute changes.

Imagis is accommodating and flexible to work with, and the team is very responsive. Of the vendors that I’ve worked with in the past, they’re definitely one of the better ones.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the IT director of a nonprofit in the criminal justice field. We’re a pretty small team with a database administrator and IT manager working under me. As head of that team, my job is to provide technical support; maintain our hardware, software, and internet/cloud services; and answer all technical issues — basically, everything IT-related.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Imagis?

We’d had in-house servers until 3–4 years ago and decided to pivot. It was a waste of time to manage continually-aging hardware, so we decided to embrace cloud solutions for all our services. Doing so would provide more flexibility for people working from home and eliminate power outage issues. That has proven to be the right decision, given that we no longer have to maintain internal hardware and our systems are accessible anywhere in the world.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Imagis was our partner in designing, implementing, and supporting our cloud infrastructure. We went through a few different iterations, initially opting for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services. We worked with that for a few years but had some issues in terms of capacity. I don’t believe we properly specked the level of computing resources we’d need. We had to add new servers on the fly, which is easily done in a cloud-based environment but was still a pivot.

We eventually ended up transitioning to a Citrix-based desktop environment, which was much better for us. It was more sustainable and easily-accessed, and generally better all around. Imagis helped us move from our in-house system to the cloud. We’re now in less of an implementation phase and more of a maintenance one.

They handle user provisioning, general troubleshooting at the user level, backups, restorations, and general issues. They intervene when there’s a problem related to our cloud environment that we can’t figure out.

There were a couple of cases where we had to implement a restoration, including a ransomware attack, and Imagis brought us back to speed quickly. They’re also working with us on our firewall infrastructure. The bulk of what we do is connected to the cloud, but they’ve done some internal work for us on our Wi-Fi network.

I’m planning to install our VoIP system myself, but it will involve some work from Imagis on the firewall side.

What is the team composition?

It’s hard to say because we’re now at the point where I don’t have to bother individual people from Imagis for different projects. We’re in support mode now and have dedicated channels for issues. We have an account manager and there are 5–6 people I’ve been in contact with. I’ve seen 2–3 names of first and second-tier support people in tickets. I don’t know how many support people they have, and that’s how it should be with good-quality support.

How did you come to work with Imagis?

They reached out to the former executive director of our organization. We get a lot of offers through email, but it so happened that Imagis had experience supporting nonprofits and they mentioned that in the email. I

t was also an opportune time because the conversation about transitioning our infrastructure was very much at the forefront of my mind. I was about to start a search and included Imagis as a candidate. Had it been two months later, I’d have found someone through other channels like recommendations.

How much have you invested with them?

It’s hard to say because I don’t get a bill directly from Microsoft, where a lot of our services are hosted. Imagis bills for that and for our Citrix licenses. They’re a reseller, so they bill us for those services instead of us having to go through multiple vendors. We pay them, and they pay our cloud provider.

Our support contract with Imagis is payable directly to them. The cost has fluctuated a lot. At this time, we’re paying $17,000–$18,000 per month for cloud fees and support, and the total cost so far is between $250,000–$500,000. I’m sure they take a reseller’s portion for the cloud services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Imagis 2–3 years ago, and I believe we went live with our cloud infrastructure in September 2018 for the bulk of our users. We worked closely with Imagis for 3–6 months to get to that point.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I can’t give any vendor a 10/10 rating, but the point where we’re at now is terrific and has been for the past six months. We had some mismatches in our expectations initially. When we first went live with the system, it didn’t perform up to expectations. I could make the argument that my team and I didn’t fully articulate our needs.

Imagis was extremely diligent about making good on what they promised us, to get to a point where what we had was a fit for our purposes. We paid more money than we’d initially hoped because we ended up going for a system we hadn’t initially considered. That system became cheaper over time, so the cost got closer to what we’d anticipated.

The infrastructure is very good now, and I give Imagis full marks for rolling up their sleeves and working together with us. It would be disingenuous for me to say that it was great from the beginning because we did have some conflict. There was nothing over the top, but we did have some mismatches between what they thought we needed and what we did. Ultimately, we’re now at a place that all parties would say is very good.

How did Imagis perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been very good from this standpoint. I don’t know what tools they use on their side, but any failures in project management and keeping schedules have been on my team’s side. I pushed things back on my side, and they were oftentimes waiting for me to provide them with schedules. I give Imagis top marks in project management.

I consider the problems we had initially to have contributed to a better working relationship now. We have had issues, but we worked them out in a proactive, pragmatic way. If there are any problems down the road, we’ll figure them out in the same way we have.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Everyone from Imagis, that my team has dealt with, gets top marks in terms of professionalism, follow-through, and general customer service. I never had the situation of sending them an email and not getting a response. Imagis is top-notch from a customer service standpoint. Even when we had a difficult situation internally and I transferred some of that heat onto them, they remained responsive and professional. They follow up afterward to make sure everything’s good.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I mention this just to nitpick, because I know they’re already working on it. Historically, we’d like to have had a portal where we could log in and see our open tickets. I believe we have this now. It would also be nice to have a place where we could see our ongoing cloud services usage for a period. Our bill has fluctuated a lot because of changing services, but I believe we’re stable now from a budgetary standpoint. If I do incur overages, I’d like to look at it from a holistic, long-term standpoint. This is something I’ve wanted, and they now have it.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs? Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Some IT providers come in and do everything, and I don’t think this is Imagis at all. We need to have an internal IT staff, even if it's just one person. I don’t think they’re the right fit for an organization that wants to completely offload IT to a vendor. Their real value proposition is in giving expertise in certain technical areas that I, as a generalist, don’t have. Also, clients need someone internally who can ensure that the organization’s expectations are set correctly.