Calhoun distributed an RFP to multiple companies to bid on this project. Of all the
bids, he says only Anexinet wanted to do an assessment to determine and address his
needs.
Anexinet is an award winning systems integrator and technology management
company that enables clients to optimize the value of their IT investments for
improving performance and operational processes.
Says Calhoun, "Anexinet's assessment methodology gave us a great understanding of
what we needed as well as a complete map of how to ‘get to completion.’ All the other companies said 'you need this many terabytes, many servers', with no true
discovery of our existing environment. Anexinet came in and measured the
performance of the servers, which was key in making a successful transition from a
physical to a virtual environment.”
The result is not only a savings for ABIM that exceeded $200,000, but also the
creation of an environment that will allow Calhoun’s IT department to provide
improved services. He says, “Better service will be provided by rewriting the software,
and our new data center environment will allow for us to meet the demands through
the development effort. Virtualization gives us the flexibility to scale our environment
as needed."
Calhoun has since done other projects with Anexinet. A recent project was the
procurement of additional storage area networks. “We put out a bid to multiple
companies to tell determine the best storage option for ABIM. What I liked about
Anexinet is that they have experience with multiple storage vendors -3PAR, EMC and
HP LeftHand Storage being among them. They were the only vendor who was able to
come in and differentiate between the various technologies. They made the caveats
for each system very clear and explained what would really work best for our
environment. The knowledge they have of both multiple vendors and industry trends
is remarkable. It continues to be a very positive experience.”
Having a diversity of product awareness and an exemplary technical knowledge of
each system is very important to us; but it is honesty and customer service that gives
ABIM the biggest reasons for working with Anexinet.
Calhoun adds, “We had a feeling that Anexinet would recommend a specific
technology, but they listened to us and were very honest in explaining the pros and
cons of the other options. They always tell us the real story without 'sugar coating'
anything. Simply put, I trust these guys.”
As for customer service, “They are very responsive. We have developed a trusted
relationship. I can ping them at any time and they'll answer any kind of question. If
we have Cisco issues, Exchange issues, anything, they are always willing to help. It's
really nice to be able to go to one vendor who knows our infrastructure - from
implementation of VMware, to our efforts to update our IP schemes, to putting our
Cisco backbone in - their knowledge of our systems makes it much easier to
accelerate through our IT initiatives. And that's another compelling factor why we
continue to work and stay loyal to them.”
Calhoun sums it up quite simply: “They are unique. I don’t want to give them big
heads, but we are really pleased doing business with Anexinet."