Solution: CAS Severn worked with the client to come up with a prototype, and later a full, modern browser-based intranet solution that retained the existing application logic to protect the client's original software investment.
Client Benefit: A graphically modern system for more productive front office workers to sell memberships, programs and to review member data. End user training and learning curve expenses were reduced while achieving an added benefit of more satisfying end user experience.
Industry: Non-Profit
Services performed/products provided: Application Development
Detailed Description:
The client is a group of athletic associations that have banded together to buy custom IT solutions. The group makes decisions and recommendations while turning to CAS Severn's expertise to develop solutions. Currently, five associations are part of the client group.

When CAS Severn first started working with the client group in 2006, the various associations involved were all running different versions of the same green-screen software solution. They were working with multiple vendors who were not making good progress in modernizing their system.

With years of green screen web modernization experience, the team at CAS Severn came in and first standardized all the individual associations on the same version of the application. This made it easier to modernize a common application for all members of the group. Then, the CAS Severn team built a prototype of the browser-based solution. Client group members were thrilled with the prototype development and asked CAS Severn to continue the work. When the project was complete the collective group of client members were using a modern graphical application browser based interface across all locations and for all end users.

CAS Severn also developed a web registration module for the client, which allows the members of the associations to modify demographic information and pay bills.

Solution:IBM ProtecTier Gateway (PT GW) Clusters in both the primary and disaster recovery data centers with IBM XIV as the backend disk storage. Data replication is active between the data center PT GW clusters to allow for failover operations in this highly available medical environment.
Client Benefit:The client has greatly reduced their overall disk storage requirement, eliminated vast amounts of duplicate data and has improved their backup operations significantly while maintaining a very fast data restore capability.
Industry:Healthcare
Services performed/products provided: Backup and Recovery, IBM Hardware and Storage, ProtecTier, XIV
Detailed Description:
As a metropolitan regional medical center, the client was facing a common challenge in the healthcare and many other industries, the challenge of managing exploding data growth. The expanding production data storage requirement also compounded the client's backup storage requirements. Without deduplication, backup data storage was growing exponentially. Everytime a new version of the production data is created, a full backup copy was required creating a scenario where 30 backup copies could be required for thirty days of production operations resulting in a backup set potentially 30 times or larger the size of the production data.

With the expertise offered by CAS Severn, the client was able to compare and evaluate several solutions including competitive offerings from EMC, other hardware vendors and cloud services providers. Carefully gathering client requirements and comparing them to several solutions, CAS Severn identified and recommended the ProtecTier Gateway cluster from IBM as the best fit. A significant portion of the CAS Severn effort consulting with the client was focused on sizing the production data types to be backed up and the retention periods for each. During this sizing effort, CAS Severn was able to estimate the deduplication ratios that could be achieved based upon the data, applications and backup methods currently deployed in the client data centers. Once the deduplication ratios were estimated a proof of concept (PoC) was undertaken using two IBM ProtecTier Gateway clusters to emulate the recommended solution prior to customer commitment to purchase. Upon successful conclusion of the PoC, the client acquired the complete solution.

Although this client is in the healthcare industry their core infrastructure and deduplication challenges are common across many industries as most enterprises have corporate email, file shares, databases and other common applications.

Solution: CAS Severn provides capable support resources to the client on a light weight recurring basis to provide the client with professional IT support and strategy without breaking the bank.
Client Benefit: Client enjoys smoother business operations and also has access to IT staffing support when needed without sacrificing quality, expertise or service. Without having to build a complete IT department of their own the client has the backing of an entire IT support enterprise, CAS Severn, on a local and personal level.
Industry: Construction
Services performed/products provided: IT Strategic Planning, Staffing
Detailed Description: A small company in Maryland was seeking quality IT support somewhere between the two extremes of 'call the guy' and 'support overkill with a mega IT corporation'. The client had found that quality and unbiased answers were hard to acquire from their existing IT support contract with a very small IT support company consisting of little more than an owner and a handful of technicians. When technology problems arose, the client frequently found themselves relying heavily on one 'guy' from the consulting firm to know all and fix all. This paradigm just was not working.

The customer needed more reliable, predictable and strategic support from a company with both the depth and breadth to handle a wide spectrum of IT support issues. CAS Severn was just the right fit. The client first understood how much we cared and then got to understand how much we know. With a layered support approach, the client receives recurring support visits combined with the flexibility to make ad hoc calls for urgent situations that invariably will arise.

To round out the support offering, CAS Severn, also makes available to the customer technical architects that upon request and periodically will work with the client to provide strategic direction and oversight of the IT infrastructure and operations. The result is a support plan custom fit to the needs and size of the business operations, allowing our client to focus on their business and not IT.