US Cloud

BACKGROUND

Can you give a brief background of your company?

We’re a technology company based in the lighting and lighting detection markets. We have 14 facilities around the world and 3,000 employees.

What is your role and responsibilities?

My title is senior systems analyst. I’m actually in charge of our Internet, Intranet and Extranet installations, all of which are on SharePoint 2010 currently.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals for the project with Fpweb.net?

We needed a low-cost way to put our website online, we’re very familiar with SharePoint technologies, and we wanted to use the platform because it offered certain functionalities that we wanted to include at a very reasonable cost. Fpweb.net showed up as a viable option for a hosting for it. The project has expanded. Fpweb.net also did a separate installation for the Extranet.

Why did your company chose SharePoint?

We could adopt SharePoint for website automation. As SharePoint grows and becomes better, it becomes more website-friendly as opposed to just Intranet-friendly.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Fpweb.net to work with?

We looked at a couple of companies, put out a RFP, and they seemed like the best option.

What parts of the project was Fpweb.net involved with?

They basically did the initial setups for us on both the Intranet and Extranet sites, where they configured the servers. From there, we took control.

Were any other technologies used besides SharePoint?

No.

Can you give us a sense of the initiative in dollar terms or personnel hours?

We hired a third party to do some of the branding for us. The separate company took about two weeks to do that, and then within 30 days, I had our website up and running with the help of Fpweb.net.

When was the project completed?

February of 2011

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

It’s not really an improvement thing because we had a very short period of time to get a website up and running. My group only had 90 days to have a fully functioning website. In that sense, the project was successful.

How did Fpweb.net perform during the project?

Fpweb.net was great. Once we had contracts in place, we had servers and everything else we needed to do the work available to us within a couple of days.

After one year, we upgraded the platform completely, and Fpweb again set up servers, and got us up and running within a couple of days. My company met all of our goals and deadlines to go through the platform upgrade.

When working with Fpweb.net, what's unique or special about them compared to other vendors you have worked with?

In my experience, their responsiveness is great. They’re one of the most responsive companies I‘ve ever worked with.

Looking back on the project, is there any area that you think they can improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

Not really. They were on top of everything for us, they performed spectacularly.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of what your company does?

We are a dental manufacturing company, so we manufacture dental instruments that dentists and other dental professionals use. We sell through vendors and distributors and to schools, places like that.

What’s your position and responsibilities?

I am an IT Specialist and the Administrator of our SharePoint site as well as the Outlook admin. I provide Tier 1, 2, and 3 IT helpdesk support.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For this particular project, what were your company’s business goals?

Fpweb.net is our SharePoint host now. They help to get SharePoint onto a cloud sever. That way it’s more easily accessible to our global workforce as well as our sales team. That was our main goal, the easier accessibility as well as the high-availability environment where the site won’t be going down or people won’t have to use a VPN to enter the site.

SOLUTION

How did you select SharePoint?

It’s our Intranet, so it replaced our system that has been around for a while. Our HR team and the rest of the company really likes it. It is a Microsoft product, which we use a lot of in the company. SharePoint was familiar to many employees. Everybody will be able to get the hang of it a lot easier than something that was completely new to them. SharePoint integrates very well with other Microsoft products. We’re on Outlook now as well, all of our contacts seamlessly goes onto SharePoint as well.

What was your process for selecting Fpweb.net to work with?

Fpweb.net is the vendor that helped as build the actual site in the beginning. They did a great job for us before so it was an easy decision to use them again.

What parts of the project was Fpweb.net involved with?

They weren’t involved with the building. They’re involved in the migration from our internal environment to the external environment, as well as helping set up a development and a QA environment on their site. We were able to build different programs and facts on our SharePoint site that can be tested in the development environment as well as the QA before we push them out.

They’ve been helpful with the upgrading the site, just general upgrades as well as maintenance that we’ve had. I can reach out to their team for general problems because I’m not formally trained in SharePoint. They are extremely helpful and responsive when I have issues.

Were any other technologies used besides SharePoint?

We have SharePoint and a SQL database.

Can you give us a sense of the initiative in dollar terms or personnel hours?

Part of the project was the migration, and that was a eighteen months ago. The entire project was probably tens of thousands of dollars, just the building of the site. That was only a portion of it. It wasn’t really part of the initial build-up. The migration was a week of my time along with three other consultants.

I’m not sure how many people worked on it from Fpwebsite, but it was a couple of weeks of testing and integration. They made sure all of our internet connectivity between our two sites was up and did the development of our dev and QA environments. It was at least a couple of weeks with about five people outside of Fpweb.

When was the project completed?

Around June, 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any stats or metrics to track improvement from the project?

I know that we’ve had one or two instances of slight downtime since we’ve been on Fpweb versus many more hours of downtime when we were hosted by a local company. Fpweb.net is very proactive about avoiding downtime. The last instance, Fpweb had our system up and running and told us that it was down before we even realized it. That is unique compared to other vendors.

There has been a major decrease in the amount of downtime. We were very happy as soon as we switched. The connectivity issues and security problems are no longer there.

How did Fpweb perform overall?

Great, like I said there were only one or two issues of downtime and that was at the very beginning. Ever since that initial period, there haven’t been any instances of downtime.

When working with Fpweb, what’s unique or special about them compared to other vendors?

The fact that they were preemptively telling us about the site being down and that they fixed it and we actually got a report on what happened was special. We’re going through another issue with a vendor right now where we’ve had downtime with them and we have kept pressuring them unsuccessfully to provide reports. 

Looking back on the project, is there any area Fpweb could improve upon or you would do differently?

No.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of your company?

We’re a consulting firm for colleges, hospitals, and industry. We have one national, publicly paid company that’s one of our clients. Many schools and colleges in the Boston and Washington D.C. areas are also clients. 

I provide asset reports and suggestions on how to use assets. I use SharePoint as an interactive tool for clients to manage that report versus a book that sits on its shelf. That’s my niche.

I also use SharePoint for business intelligence work on data cubes and graphs. I collect data for my clients and put it in dashboard format so they can make business decisions. The SharePoint platform is hosted by Fpweb.net.

What is your role?

I’m the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals for this project?

I wanted to increase productivity and profits. My company is currently using the third version of SharePoint that they’ve installed. I’m in the process of switching things to SharePoint 2013. It started with MOSS four to five years ago.

 Why did you select SharePoint initially?

It’s always been a great filing cabinet to hold data or hold documents. I like that aspect of it, but a few years ago, it didn’t have the ability to show graphics. I spent a lot of money at that time to develop graphics for the SharePoint platform. Each new version has improved its graphics capabilities, so I’m glad I picked SharePoint versus an ASP.NET platform. I like the ability to store everything in one place while lifting data and documents. I like that it meshes with databases fairly easy.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Fpweb.net?

There were small players and some fairly big players like Fpweb.net out there at the time. I picked Fpweb because they’re substantially cheaper than hiring my own IT team. That’s probably the main reason I outsource IT work versus keeping it all in-house. They also seem to be one of the best SharePoint partners.

What parts of the project was Fpweb.net involved in?

They pretty much only worked on the IT server network. Their team provided a server for my company. They also provide SharePoint, and I do most of the other IT work myself.

Were there any other technologies used besides SharePoint?

No. 

Can you give us a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or personnel hours? 

We had six people working 80 percent of the time for four years on just this project, so it was fairly substantial. 

Is the project still ongoing?

Yes.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement?

I don’t have any specific tasks but my company’s efficiency has definitely improved.

Are you confident that you made the right decision to choose SharePoint and Fpweb.net?

Definitely. Yes.

How did Fpweb.net perform during the project?

Flawlessly. Customer representative Amber did a phenomenal job taking care of all of my requests. I’m always surprised to see how well she does it.

Is there anything unique or special about Fpweb.net compared to other companies that you may have worked with?

I think their customer service is unique, I can call Fpweb, and the support is great. I receive a response within minutes, if I have any issues. I get an email back saying it’s been fixed or they’re on it. The customer service, if I need to add products or I need to tweak what I’m spending, is always right there to help me along.

Is there any area that you think Fpweb.net could improve upon or you would do differently?

No. SharePoint is always improving with its many version upgrades.