A United States federal court’s IT team had a directive to stabilize, upgrade, and modernize their network infrastructure and security controls. Project plans were developed to meet the directive’s goals with a focus on modernizing the information technology (IT) enterprise platforms and cybersecurity while leveraging new technologies and services. With a distributed ecosystem (employees, advocates, and citizens), the federal court recognized the IT team was required to manage more IT support requirements than ever before. With this complexity, there was the need to find a partner with the technology and technical services expertise that would ensure high availability and optimal performance of the entire IT infrastructure. The federal court also wanted the provider to augment their IT technical resources to continually:
- Stabilize, upgrade, modernize, migrate, and secure its IT network and voice systems
- Deploy IT solutions to elevate performance and security
- Deliver effective project implementation
- Determine and coordinate proper risk mitigation activities
- Support documentation and equipment inventory control
- Execute other federal court projects, as necessary
The major IT network infrastructure projects were:
- Building a business continuity disaster recovery center
- Modernizing the voice network
- Updating the network security framework
- Adding a new live video streaming service for oral arguments
Challenges
The federal court evaluated their internal IT capacity as well as the goals and needs for the organization. With limited IT engineering resources, the federal court recognized the need to find a technology consulting company with the technical expertise and experience in implementing vendor agnostic, mission-critical projects.
Solutions
The federal court expanded its IT team’s capabilities with Networking For Future (NFF) professional services personnel by using NFF NetActive Project, Technical Staffing-as-a-Service (TSaaS), and Co-Managed Support services. Technical Services Working with the federal court, the NetActive professional services team delivered on the following key service areas:
- Discovery – Identifying where all assets reside on the network and their life-cycle status
- Technical Support – NFF supplied highly trained engineers who knew the environment and how to quickly repair system issues
- Optimization – Keeping the assets optimized allowing the federal court to get the most value out of them
- Proactive/Predictive Abilities – Gathering the project information, providing outcome insight, and documenting recommendations
- Multivendor Support – Delivering high-quality support across a broad spectrum of products to provide a central point of contact
- Co-Managed Network Support – Conducting bi-annual network infrastructure audit and strategic roadmap review, managing proactive network problem monitoring and alerting, automated endpoint, topology, and traffic discovery, and access to the NFF professional services team knowledge-base
IT Infrastructure The major IT infrastructure project deliverables of the NetActive Project team were:
- To enhance overall performance and security
- To guarantee continuous operations, designed and implemented a remote business continuity disaster recovery center
- To take advantage of unified communications network technology enhancements, the voice network was modernized
- An updated security framework incorporating access control and Cisco Identity Services Engine and Advanced Malware Protection
- Launch a new live video streaming service to replace the audio-only solution, including a remote site transmission travel kit
Results
Customer Experience The federal court IT team received product technology training and best practices education from the NFF technical consultants. This information transfer provided the IT team with deeper insights for next-generation architecture and technology consideration. Project Outcomes The partnership the federal court forged with NFF delivered the following:
- Asset discovery, life-cycle management, monitoring, and compliance
- Voice and IT network infrastructure system security, upgrades, and optimization
- Fast access to technical experts who understand the federal court IT environment
Ongoing, the NFF NetActive TSaaS program furnishes a part-time technical expert who understands the federal court IT environment. The TSaaS consultant continues to:
- Evaluate network infrastructure performance management
- Conduct network upgrades, troubleshooting, and maintenance
- Deliver effective project implementation for new IT initiatives
- Monitor, track, support, and optimize IT assets
- Keep documentation fulfillment up to date
The TSaaS solution of reaching back to highly experienced and certified senior engineers for technical guidance has proven to be extremely beneficial and timely for various project completions.
“We needed a partner to implement our IT projects, where we just provided ideas and a box of requirements. The provider needed to give us an advanced, well managed, secure, and vendor-agnostic solution that included IT professional services at a level required for long-term project support success. While continuing to modernize our network, having a part-time engineering consultant is easier on the budget. When different technical skills are required, the reach back to the NFF engineering bench is an exceptional benefit. Our partnership with NFF has allowed us the ability to focus on our core services and not worry that our ability to serve our customer base will diminish. We gladly recommend NFF for delivering your network improvement projects and supplementing your IT team technical requirements.” United States Federal Court Director, Office of Information Technology
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United States Federal Court IT Infrastructure and Technical Services Case Study
About Networking For Future Inc.
Networking For Future Inc. (NFF) is a Washington, DC-based company offering a performance-focused approach to delivering transformational IT business solutions. We take pride in keeping users productive and engaged by providing business and IT teams with the solutions they need to improve their performance in a dynamic, connected world.
NFF, an ISO 9001:2015 certified company, is a Cisco Gold Partner, Riverbed Premier Partner, NetApp Gold Partner, VMware Enterprise Partner, Splunk Partner, Microsoft Partner, Gigamon Partner, Riverbed Premier Partner, Aternity Partner, Citrix Silver Solution Advisor Partner, and holds GSA Schedule 47QTCA21D0047 and numerous other contract vehicles. For more information contact NFF at sales@nffinc.com.
