Imagis

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.

What challenge were you trying to address with Imagis?

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

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.

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.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Radar 8, which collects patient satisfaction statistics for medical practices. We collect data internally, as well as via routing through online rating platforms.

What challenge were you trying to address with Imagis?

We had an original vendor that established our processor on Microsoft Azure. The platform processes over 250,000 surveys on a monthly basis. We sought to replace this solution with a more streamlined one.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Retaining Microsoft Azure as our computing environment, Imagis built a new processing platform for us. They also trained me and my team on various operational aspects before they turned the product over to us.

What is the team composition?

I worked primarily with one teammate, who spearheaded the project. I suspect that there were 2–3 others behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Imagis?

Imagis is the sister company of another company I used to work with. I was referred to them because my project’s requirements were outside of my usual company’s scope of services.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $7,500 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work for this project began in February and wrapped up in July 2020. I have an ongoing relationship with them.

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

The new platform is terrific compared to our old one. We now enjoy more features while saving 25% on monthly platform costs. The quality of their work has been top-notch.

How did Imagis perform from a project management standpoint?

They managed the project flawlessly. I didn’t have to worry about anything, because they had no problem adhering to deadlines and meeting the expected milestones.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was blown away by how aligned they were to my needs as a customer. They initially submitted two proposals: one for the initial build, and another for ongoing management. But, we’re a tech company, so we’d be capable of maintaining the platform ourselves. When I told them that we would no longer need their support after system hand-off, they immediately accepted that revised scope of work.

Their professionalism makes them a preferred vendor for when (and if) we look into continued infrastructure management.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. I was happy with the whole process, from start to finish.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give them a call, and be clear about what you need from them. They’ll deliver.

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.

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.

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.

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.