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Partners
Network Infrastructure & System Overhaul
Catholic Guardian Society & Home Bureau (CGSHB)
Client: The merger of Catholic Guardian Society and Catholic Home Bureau in 2006 created a social services provider that operates a network of 7 administrative and community-based offices and 44 residential facilities located in all 5 boroughs of New York City as well as Long Island. CGSHB specializes in child abuse and neglect prevention services, as well as long term and temporary residential services to neglected, abused and dependent children in foster homes and group care settings, and services for people with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. Other programs provided include: programs for mentally ill adolescents and exceptional foster care homes serving children with behavioral disorders, family day care, homeless, juvenile justice, maternity and private adoption services.
Problem: Catholic Guardian Society faced a myriad of issues due to aging infrastructure compounded by an upcoming merger and growth expectations; servers were frequently offline and running unsupported legacy operating systems. The Microsoft Exchange email server was crashing regularly. Spam, viruses, and spyware were persistent issues costing time and money. A project to interconnect their 35 residential facilities was not finished and was taking longer than expected. In short, the organization was growing quickly and it became apparent a shift to a strategic use of technology was necessary.
Solution: Braveline Technology began by replacing an outdated server with a modern machine running Windows Server 2003. MS Exchange and the Active Directory database was overhauled and patched. Braveline Technology installed a Barracuda Spam Firewall to help solve the problem with spam. The team installed a Watchguard Firebox to secure the private network and host VPN connections from the residences. Surf Control was implemented to filter and clean Web content, thereby protecting the organization from malicious code and inappropriate web use. Braveline dispatched a team of network engineers to connect all of the remote facilities within a 4 week period.
Strategic planning, capital investment and implementation of recommended best practices resulted in a decrease in average support costs by 52%, despite an increase in users by more than 100%. All systems are stable, secure and backed up. Desktops are standardized and applications are deployed and managed centrally. Every device on the network is monitored, with 24/7 support. According to the Executive Director "everything just works, all the time, every time."