CLIENT: SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®), is one of the oldest and largest independent, nonprofit, applied research and development organizations in the United States.

SwRl’s 11 technical divisions offer a wide range of technical expertise and services in such areas as chemistry, space science, nondestructive evaluation, automation, engine design, mechanical engineering, electronics and more.

The Institute occupies more than 1,200 acres and provides more than 2 million square feet of laboratories, test facilities, workshops and offices.

AREA OF FOCUS

IT Operations Management (ITOM), Technical Help Desk Support and Governance

CHALLENGE

Need to provide operations management and help desk support to IT end users to include after hours support and offsite support.

SERVICES PROVIDED

Beginning in 2001 and continuing on today, Sistema Technologies provides ongoing help desk support to SWRI through PC Techs, Network Administrators and Help Desk supervisors. The team now manages over 300 end users and supports over 400 computers. In addition, the team supports 137 servers, Windows, UNIX and LINUX operating systems and 5 LINUX clusters.

Invited to be part of the high performance committee, Y&L lowered licensing costs by switching SWRI to open source software, established 200 notes cluster SAN for scalability and reduced computational analysis time for graphics card processing from three weeks to one day. In addition to the teams’ support responsibilities, they also standardized non-proprietary hardware to lower costs, implemented a disaster recovery plan, standardized desktop configurations for easy deployment, and built redundancy into the network core for a more efficient use of VOiP technology.

In regard to installing new desktops, a Sistema team member will meet directly with a SWRI employee to review their hardware requirements. The hardware requirements are usually based on the software being used. Sistema provides a hardware recommendation that allows the SWRI end-user to optimize the use of their software. This eliminates the problem of state-of­the-art software being executed on inadequate hardware devices.

Significantly pleased with the teams’ activities and ongoing support, our help desk team was asked to act as Enterprise Architects to define the division’s technology roadmap. Having become fully acculturated within the SWRI culture and with a strong commitment to providing excellent customer service, the Sistema team has a strong sense of loyalty to SWRI.

IT OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT AND HELPDESK SUPPORT

  • Install Software Patches
  • Software License Management
  • Assist with the evaluation of new software and hardware technologies
  • Receive, log and track incoming calls from end-users
  • Address customer needs and generate reports
  • Order New Computers
  • Support Remote Connectivity Issues
  • Configure VPN clients
  • Maintain inventory of commonly used parts to minimize downtime
  • Maintain loaner laptops and desktops for emergency situations