Akins IT

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the IT Director for a Mid-Size commercial general contractor. We have about 160 employees and build projects that range from 10 Million to upwards of 300 Million.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Akins IT?

MS Defender optimization and InTune Implementation

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We selected this vendor because of the natural integration of our Microsoft suite including Azure. The deciding factors were costs and effectiveness of the solution. Defender and InTune were no brainers because we know it works, and was already included in our current Microsoft licesning.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

About 80% of our workforce is remote. We did not have a way to centrally manage and apply proper security policies to these devices, so we engaged with AkinsIT to help us with this problem. We took a 2 step approach:

1. Configure Defender according to industry best practices
2. Implement inTune for centralized control and pushing appropriate policies.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?  

None, the vendor in our case was Microsoft, and they did not provide any resources.  All resources were from AkinsIT, in which we worked with 3 resources.  A project manager, a systems engineer and sales.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?  

Our project finished on time and on budget.  

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

AkinsIT was very responsive throughout the lifecyle of the project.  Their project manager setup weekly check in meetings to help along the way.  Their systems engineer was able to effectively communicate the most technical parts of the project well.  

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What I find most impressive and unique about AkinsIT is that they actually care about their clients.  They intentionally build relationships with their clients, leading to trust and respect between both parties. Shawn and his team have a way of making us feel like long time friends every time we meet.  

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

The lead time for quotes can improve, but once the project started everything was done timely.