How NTG Modernized Oglethorpe’s IT Environment with a Cost-Conscious Mindset
As Oglethorpe grew, they needed a more efficient and reliable IT infrastructure. Here’s how NTG gave Oglethorpe a complete modern tech refresh, while maintaining a low-cost budget.
About Oglethorpe
Oglethorpe, Inc. provides management solutions for health centers, wellness clinics and hospitals that specialize in psychiatric services, drug and alcohol detoxification and rehabilitation, eating disorder therapy and behavioral health counseling. In addition to providing support and guidance to numerous patients, they also specialized in breathing new life into failed or struggling recovery centers—including refreshing their IT infrastructures.
The Investigation
In early 2014, NTG was contacted by Oglethorpe, a Tampa-headquartered network of psychiatric health and addiction recovery centers. At that time, the company provided treatment for mental illnesses and addiction in five facilities around the state of Florida. Oglethorpe initially reached out to NTG seeking assistance with their phone system. They were steadily hiring new employees at various facilities, each with incongruous or aging equipment, and calls were dropping or failing to connect at all. NTG’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and head systems architect, David Morris, answered the call to investigate further.
During the initial network discovery, Morris and the company’s in-house IT team determined that the phone system itself wasn’t the core issue. The problems with weak connectivity were more IP-related, exacerbated by unpatched servers, end-of-life legacy hardware, and switches that were barely handling the increased traffic in the company’s interconnected systems.
NTG’s Cost-Saving Approach
A modern tech refresh for a company of this size is (perhaps unsurprisingly) very expensive. The company’s internal IT team, in collaboration with NTG, presented the need for new hardware and equipment throughout the five facilities. That need was recognized, but the company wanted to approach the problem with a “cost conscious” mindset. NTG agreed to work with these parameters, embracing the philosophy “our customers’ success is our success.”
The Solution
NTG’s engineers determined the hardware that was in critical need of an update, carefully noting which servers and switches in the company’s infrastructure had a few months or years of effective life left. Cost-saving though it was, NTG discovered the process would be stretched over the course of a couple years. The company agreed it would be both parties’ best interest to station a permanent NTG employee at the company’s IT headquarters.
The Results
During this time the partnership between NTG and the company was strengthened significantly. At some point, the company was approached by another Managed Services company who questioned the methodology of avoiding a complete tech refresh, not necessarily understanding the full scope of the company’s needs. The IT director there relayed this information to NTG (they declined the discovery session with the other MSP), telling us “These people are trying to sell us a Toyota when we’ve got a Rolls Royce.”
The rest was history. This company specializing in psychiatric health now operates eighteen facilities across the continental United States with a sufficiently modern, and more importantly effective IT infrastructure.
Growing Today and Into the Future
NTG continues to aid the company’s tech infrastructure consisting of 1,200 users using just under 400 PCs and VoIP phone systems. Today, they’re seeking further expansion as they continue to rehabilitate struggling psychiatric health centers.
