Alliance Technologies

The following write up and audio clips are from an interview with Mark Becker, President of Mark J. Becker & Associates (MJB&A), Contact: 800-821-5463, www.mjbaconsulting.com

About Mark J. Becker & Associates
Mark J. Becker & Associates is an independent employee benefits consulting firm focusing on group benefit plans for employers in Iowa and surrounding states. MJB&A employs a full-time staff of 5 people and is located in Johnston, Iowa. MJB&A has converted their IT infrastructure to Alliance Technologies' hosted "cloud" service.

Before Moving to the “Cloud”
Prior to implementing a hosted solution, MJB&A’s IT environment consisted of a mix of 13 computing devices (PCs and laptops), an on-site server with various software packages such as Microsoft Office and Goldmine (CRM).

As their technology became outdated, they were looking at large capital expenditures for replacing old hardware (server and computers), upgrading software applications and migrating Operating Systems from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Before moving to the cloud, MJB&A analyzed how much of their staff’s time was lost due to IT support issues and downtime on a yearly basis. They determined they were losing about 200-250 hours per year, which equated to approximately $30,000 - $50,000 in potential lost revenue per year. By transitioning to the cloud and moving their IT resources off-site, MJB&A figures to gain back a lot of this lost productivity.

 
Mark J. Becker, MJB&A
“The primary driver for us was cost – it was unsustainable for us to exhaust that much time and money for an office of 5 people.”
“The biggest thing we'll gain from moving to the cloud is recovery of our time. Not having to spend our own time on IT issues is a big benefit.”

 
After Moving to the “Cloud”
Today MJB&A has access to their server resources and critical business applications through the cloud, this includes:

•    Microsoft Exchange for Email and shared calendar
•    Microsoft Dynamics CRM
•    Access Time and Billing database
•    Microsoft Office applications
•    File sharing and printing

MJB&A employees are able to connect remotely to their individual hosted workstation from any Internet-connected device. This new method of accessing and sharing information has provided the following benefits:

•    Improved remote accessibility. Connecting directly to a cloud desktop is much smoother than their previous VPN connection.
•    Longer life out of aging computers. Because their data and applications are hosted in the cloud and not on the individual workstation, MJB&A can extend the life of their old machines.
•    No capital expense to buy a new physical server. “Renting” space in the cloud takes the place of buying a new server.
•    Managed backup service – no more on-site tape backups to deal with.
•    Increased data security as their new environment is hosted in a data center.
•    No more time spent on-site taking care of PC and server maintenance and upgrades.

 
Mark J. Becker, MJB&A
“We now pay a fixed monthly fee per user and have access to all of the IT resources and support we need.”
“Another benefit of running out of the cloud is that we’re always on the latest version of everything and don’t have to maintain or update applications anymore.”
 

Audio Clips

We’re a typical office...

Always on the latest versions...

Remote accessibility...

We’re not an IT company...

 
Interested in learning more how Alliance Technologies can build a similar solution for your company? Please contact Jason Lamping at Alliance Technologies.