CAL IT Group

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of operations at a car sales company.

What challenge were you trying to address with CAL IT Group?

We needed help with IT maintenance and management.

What was the scope of their involvement?

CAL IT Group manages our daily IT operations. They provide phone and computer maintenance and installation services to all our employees. Their team also handles other technical pipelines that we rely on to run our car dealership business.

What is the team composition?

I mainly interact with three resources from their team.

How did you come to work with CAL IT Group?

The CEO of a company we're acquainted with recommended CAL IT Group's team to me.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing collaboration with CAL IT Group started in February 2021.

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

CAL IT Group has a meticulous and timely technical process, which allows them to meet all our IT needs quickly and efficiently. We can always count on their team to deliver quality results.

How did CAL IT Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate via email, phone calls, and text messages. Their team manages our project well and remains attentive to our needs and responsive to our queries.

What did you find most impressive about them?

CAL IT Group's genuine concern for the success of our business is apparent in their understanding and delivery of our needs. From my perspective, they're a dependable and easygoing partner that strives to meet my standards while preserving the smooth rhythm of our partnership.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’ve done a fine job from the start.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be upfront in highlighting your goals and listen to their suggestions. You can trust CAL IT Group to perform IT-related tasks with utter preciseness and timeliness.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of GBI Tile and Stone, Inc., and we’re a national distributor of tiles and stone. We’ve got locations here in Huntington Beach, which is our corporate headquarters. We also have a warehouse in Florida and offices in North Carolina.

What challenge were you trying to address with CAL IT Group?

The person in charge of our IT didn’t have the full breadth of skills we needed to handle desktop, remote, and server issues. However, we weren’t at the size where we were big enough to have multiple IT people. Despite that, we still needed some support. After internal discussions, we made the decision to outsource so that we could have a broad range of support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

At first, CAL IT Group made sure that they could take over and maintain our network. Then, we gave their team larger projects such as moving our onsite servers virtually. Due to COVID-19, moving our work remotely was a big part of what we were trying to accomplish with them. Since we had big servers that we continually needed to replace, we asked CAL IT Group about the best solution to address that. They then worked with external companies to secure the cloud space and software we needed. After testing for 30 days, we were able to decommission our local servers.

The team continues to support us because we have a pretty distributed workforce, and their goal is to enable our employees to have quick access to what they need, with the least amount of downtime. We also meet the team on a monthly basis and talk about the high-level strategic perspective of the IT support they’re providing to us. Additionally, they help us figure out our challenges as a company, from a technology standpoint. After that, they propose solutions that help us solve our issues.

What is the team composition?

We have a core group composed of 3–4 people, but they still have many people on their side that are supporting us with our needs.

How did you come to work with CAL IT Group?

I worked with CAL IT Group in the past when I was at a different company. While most of their support was done remotely, it was also nice that they had the ability to go on site. Since they were local enough to help us when we needed something done on-site, they were the perfect choice for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent closer to $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in March 2020, and it’s ongoing.

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

We’ve received more coverage and expertise from CAL IT Group while securing 30% savings. Additionally, they have a quick response time, which lets them address our issues as soon as possible.

How did CAL IT Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a great project management process, and they’ve been very professional. We have weekly meetings to discuss their progress, and we communicate through phone calls and emails. We have in-person meetings from time to time, too. In addition, we use Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and RingCentral. Overall, they’ve stayed on top of things.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their responsiveness is impressive and so is their ability to limit our downtime. They also have great technical knowledge, allowing them to help us with high-level issues. As a result, they always find platforms that help us utilize technology and maintain work efficiency.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind as areas they could improve because we have a good relationship.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

On top of daily communication with CAL IT Group, take the time to participate in their monthly meetings. In doing so, you can discuss the project on a strategic level and check if they're meeting the engagement’s expectations.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of a manufacturing company in California.

What challenge were you trying to address with CAL IT Group?

We needed a managed IT service provider. Our company was using another vendor, but their services weren’t good. As a result, we wanted to switch to another provider to keep our network up and running. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

In a nutshell, CAL IT provides all of our IT and computer needs from backing up our system to protecting us from security threats. If any of our employees need technical assistance related to our computer network, CAL IT helps them. They also maintain our servers, hardware, and software to keep everything current and running smoothly. The team mainly works remotely, but they work on-site when necessary. 

What is the team composition?

We directly work with 3–4 people from their team, including support representatives and head engineers.

How did you come to work with CAL IT Group?

I dealt with CAL IT’s owner and one of their head engineers when they were at one of our previous IT service providers. When that firm was bought out by a larger one, their employees started leaving. When we dropped that provider, we switched to another IT company, but their services had horrible quality. 

Around 2–3 years later, CAL IT’s owner let me know that they were starting their own business. At that point, choosing them was a no-brainer; I knew their services were good based on our prior experience. As a result, we hired them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested over $250,000. We pay a monthly fee on top of our expenses for purchasing equipment and replacing servers and computers. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We began the partnership in November 2016, and the engagement is ongoing. 

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

Our partnership with CAL IT has been positive. Whenever we come into the office and expect the lights to turn on, they turn on when we flip the switch. That’s the same for our network; when we expect our computers to work, they work. When they don’t work on rare occasions, CAL IT resources are there for us. To sum up, no news is good news for our engagement. 

How did CAL IT Group perform from a project management standpoint?

CAL IT’s communication is excellent. Moreover, they can give us a range of options for upgrades and backup systems while considering our budget carefully. They’re highly flexible and current with technology. As a result, I’m assured that we’re getting top-quality services and guidance when we have new projects. 

To communicate, we use their website, where we can log in for service tickets, which are delivered via emails. If we have an emergency, we use phone calls. Since we’re a manufacturing company, we start early and have a second shift. As a result, we’re calling CAL IT all the time, and someone always picks up the calls. They don’t tell us to wait until they’re at their office or call us back in a few hours — their service is always immediate. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

CAL IT knows our environment well, and they respond quickly to our needs. As a result, we get a hold of people who know what they’re doing. For comparison, other teams have a tiered system where we get a level one technician first. If that person can’t figure the problem out, they escalate it to level two or level three personnel. By contrast, CAL IT provides personalized services. They know our company and IT environment, and that’s their major differentiator.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. I’m happy with their services.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Look for a team that takes the time to learn your IT environment because that makes a huge difference. Depending on your needs, CAL IT can offer personalized services where they get to know your company and network. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CIO of First Credit Union. We’re based in Chandler, Arizona, and we operate primarily in the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan markets. We’ve been in business for over 90 years.

I oversee all things related to IT, as well as things that involve facility matters and digital and strategic initiatives.

What challenge were you trying to address with CAL IT Group?

We were looking for a partner that understood our environment.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, we engaged CAL IT to oversee email solutions for antivirus and cyber security measures. It quickly evolved into overseeing our Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment and our whole VMware environment, which involved storage management, backups, patching, and more.

We partnered with them to identify the infrastructure we needed to deliver that environment successfully. They assisted us in the procurement and installation of that gear and the acquisition of the Citrix license that was required. Then, we identified the need in our environment to have our VMware be more resilient, so we partnered with VMware to assess the capabilities in that area. CAL IT determined and implemented another solution, which has reduced our Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) to meet our business goals for disaster recovery and business continuity.

They also worked with our team to establish the images required for the users and got that deployed in eight remote locations, including the Wyze and Dell hardware to run those desktops efficiently. We got five years out of that initial phase, and we’ve now refreshed that entire environment.

What is the team composition?

We work with Kevin (Managing Partner) and the other principal from CAL IT. Additionally, they’ve pulled in partners with Citrix and Dell, primarily in terms of hardware licensing.

How did you come to work with CAL IT Group?

We were working with a firm that wasn’t keeping up with our business needs. I had the occasion to cross paths with CAL IT when they started. We’d worked with Joe (Director of Technical Services) previously, so we just reached out to see if they could cover our needs.

Their IT knowledge, financial services, and cybersecurity requirements could put us in an excellent position to do a couple of white-label engagements. 

How much have you invested with them?

Since we’ve been with them, it’s undoubtedly over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with CAL IT since August 2016, and our relationship is ongoing.

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

Environment, stability, and uptime are three times better. They also hit the marks in terms of our ROI. We’d never experienced that before we engaged with CAL IT. They’ve put us in a great spot to ensure the network and systems are available and up. In addition, they’ve been great for the team from a credibility standpoint.

Moreover, the VDI environment has enabled us to standardize our desktops, which has helped from user consistency and cybersecurity standpoints. That put us in an excellent spot for people to work remotely, so when COVID19 hit, we were able to provision roughly 70% of our workforce in less than two weeks to work remotely with the VDI solution and a two-factor authentication process.

How did CAL IT Group perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s really good. They’re highly engaged with the team, and they understand their role. They’re a smaller organization, so our communication is cohesive. CAL IT has done a good job of managing their pipeline and doing resource planning. They provide a project timeline, so they block out that time frame for us. In that sense, we haven’t had an issue or delay in starting a project.

When they’ve run into a constraint with a provider and can’t deliver in the time they’d committed to, they’ve done a good job of escalating with the providers. For example, we recently acquired a Nimble Storage unit. However, since HP acquired it, their fulfillment process isn’t as quick as it used to be. CAL IT has kept us posted every step of the way, and they’ve taken the appropriate steps to escalate it and ensure that we still hit our mark, working to mitigate the impact from the delay.

We communicate verbally and with written updates. We have a standing weekly meeting, which we may skip on some occasions. We use that meeting to check in on recurring maintenance issues and matters, but we also use it to open projects and schedule additional meetings. Additionally, the team provides weekly minutes so we can look back on our notes and previous issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their understanding of what we’re trying to achieve and the cohesiveness of their solutions are outstanding. Also, their team is insightful enough to know when something falls outside their box of solutions, and they’re not afraid to partner up with someone else.

For example, we have a partner here in Phoenix that we use extensively. We’ve had CAL IT interfacing directly with them — both with us and without us on the call to work out a solution. They don’t shy away from that, and we get zero fingerpointing from them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As firms grow, sometimes they lose track of what made them good. If CAL IT can keep doing what they do as they scale up, they’re going to do fine.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that they understand your entire business goal so they can provide the most cohesive solution, even if that includes them partnering with somebody else. If you genuinely explain what you’re trying to achieve, they’ll hit the mark for you.