Case studies
Website Development Outsourcing

Branch Office IT Solution for an International Corporation

The client

The client is an international corporation with branches spread over the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and some large cities in China like Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc., the business scope of which in Asian area focuses on selling, therefore, out of consideration for cost efficiency, the client didn't employ professional IT staff to conduct IT infrastructure maintenance and support. With the fact that China has become a vital market to their business, they decided to look for a qualified Chinese IT infrastructure outsourcing company to do the job.

What the client wanted

The client wanted one-stop service from requirements analysis, design, implementation at the former stage to management and maintenance at the latter stage, including: 

  • Infrastructure solution assessment
  • Procurement agency
  • Infrastructure planning and architecture
  • IDC-environment Server hosting
  • Remote Monitoring and Management
  • On site support service
  • HelpDesk service

Our Solutions

The whole project was divided into three main parts: inception, implementation and maintenance:

  • Since the client had no clear and complete requirements, we helped analyze and optimize the requirements and presented a proposal on how to implement the project during the inception phase;
  • Based on thorough understanding upon the requirements, we offered customized Branch Office Solution from Microsoft since they are working under Windows environment;
  • At the end of inception phase, we provided the detailed implementation plan based on the confirmed solution so that the client could know well about the costs and time that needed before entering the implementation phase;
  • As we have kept good relationship with local hardware and software vendors, we purchased the products on behalf of the client at a quite favorable price, which greatly reduced the client's investment in hardware and software procurement.
  • We deployed IT facilities in data center and set up network infrastructure to let the client connect to remote network facilities;
  • As the capital of China, Beijing has the best network bandwidth resource, we built a Hub site in Beijing Data Center for the client and as a result, all other branches in Asia were able to establish VPN connections to Beijing Hub site;
  • We set up VPN connections between Beijing(Hub site), Shanghai(satellite site) and Canada (head office) with Microsoft ISA 2004 Standard as core technology to solve the problems of slow speed, low security and complicated operation process which occurred when Shanghai branch visiting resources of the head office, and to build the whole application platform, from hardware installation, network connection, operation platform setup to Microsoft ISA2004 Standard application platform configuration;
  • We customized SLA before entering the maintenance phase and proposed the measures to further improve our service level ;
  • We provided application troubleshooting and HelpDesk services for the client during the maintenance phase.

Product Used in The Case

  • Hardware: HP320 Server, HP380 Server, Dell2324 Switch, Ultrium Tape Drive 232, Huawei R2621, NM10, Certeon S-1000
  • Software: Microsoft ISA2004 Standard Edition, Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition, VRP OS (similar to Cisco OS)

Technologies Required

Microsoft Branch Office Infrastructure Solution for R2
Windows server 2003 R2, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Group Policies, RRAS, Windows ISA2004, Site to Site VPN setup
Network skills: Fast Ethernet, Routing protocols, NAT, Firewall, OSI Model, VPN, IPSec, GRE protocol

The Final Achievements

  • The stability and speed for accessing LOB applications from Asian branches has got improved significantly;
  • The TCO of project implementation has been reduced greatly with one-stop service we provided; 
  • The staff at branch offices have enjoyed more efficient and convenient IT support from local engineers without any language barrier due to  the engineers' excellent English ability;
  • The time difference has been eliminated, for all issues raised by branch offices could get quick response from our support team;
  • After setting up of the whole application platform, the computers of branch offices were added into the domain of the head office, as a result, the head office has got the branches' IT assets under its control.