Demand Generator: Andrey Leonenko, Powersolution.com
New York-based Brean Murray, Carret and Co. first hired HoHoKus, N.J.-based Powersolution.com to develop a new Web site, and after that project was successful, the financial services firm contacted the solution provider to help with its e-mail dilemma.
E-mail messages with large attachments, like the reports it was sending to clients, were sometimes taking all day to work their way through the system. The number of companies the firm was covering more than doubled, from 50 to 120, and the number of reports went up in conjunction. If clients didn't have the report first thing in the morning, it was unlikely that they would use the information to make a trade that day, threatening the firm's bottom line.
"The e-mail system we had was not able to handle the volume, so if we had an initiation of coverage or an industry report and were sending it to 2,000 people, it would take the whole day," said Rodrigo Alanis, director of information technologies at Brean Murray, Carret and Co., adding that by the time a customer finally received the message, they were out of time.
"We brought the problem to [Powersolution.com], and we started analyzing all of the things that had to be done: how many customers, how big were the reports and compliance issues in terms of tracking and keeping e-mail," Alanis said.
For Powersolution.com CTO Andrey Leonenko, the problem wasn't obvious at first. "Actually, it was quite a tricky project because originally it looked like a simple upgrade, and when they told us what kind of symptoms they were seeing, it didn't look like a simple problem. It wasn't like the server was dead, the server was very busy," Leonenko said.
The two companies worked together to develop a solution, but Powersolution.com's first suggestion wasn't a fit for the customer. "We came out with a solution that was great, but way too expensive," Alanis said. "We got to a point where we got a solution that was something that we [wanted to] serve our business. ... It was within our reach in terms of budget."
The solution combined a cluster of Hewlett-Packard DL380 servers with an HP MSA500 Storage Array running Microsoft Exchange 2003 with Active Directory and was fully redundant. The solution provider hit a few snags when migrating applications and replacing hardware, but all were overcome.
Pleased with Powersolution.com's work, Alanis has hired them to deliver a new messaging server and is considering signing on for some of the solution provider's managed services. Powersolution.com also is discussing infrastructure expansion projects at the firm's U.S. and Asia offices.
"I'm a very demanding person. My quality standards are set pretty high. Our company is a financial company, and as you can probably imagine, in this kind of business, everything is 'now,' " Alanis said. "Basically, the same kind of service level works in terms of me providing services to my customers and my users, so they can provide to the customers of the firm, the same way I am with my providers. A provider that cannot deliver good service quickly is out of the configuration."
The project was a success from the solution provider's point of view as well. "The operations goal was to provide the client with the highest level of service. I believe that we demonstrated great operational achievements on that project; and despite [the] many complications, we endured minimum downtime. We carefully tailored the solution to the client's requirements while achieving maximum performance of the equipment and software for the client," Leonenko said.
>> THE CUSTOMER VIEW The solution provider takes both budget and technology requirements into account, helping the customer build its business.
>> VENDORS REPRESENTED Microsoft (Microsoft Exchange 2003, Active Directory); Hewlett-Packard (HP DL380 servers with a MSA500 Storage Array)