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BCPVPA makes the grade with Dell and Microsoft®

Opus Consulting Group The BC Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Association is an autonomous professional association that helps members develop skills to be effective leaders, but an aging infrastructure and end-of-life technology were holding it back. BCPVPA was looking to reduce support costs, standardize its desktop configurations and improve remote connectivity, as well as improve workflow around document management.

With only 15 users and limited resources, it turned to Opus Consulting Group, a Dell Enterprise Architecture Certified Partner, to update its business with the right technology mix of Dell servers, desktops and notebooks, as well as Microsoft applications – at a price it could afford.

“We saw that their support costs had been escalating as their infrastructure aged, and we knew we could reduce those costs using Dell and Microsoft technology,” said Richard Brown, president of Opus Consulting Group. “Dell’s platform includes a rich set of products that allows us to do that. Support, standardization and product lifecycle management come hand-in-hand when working with Dell. And their configurations and OpenManage products integrate nicely with Microsoft and add some additional value.”


Opus is a technology consulting company that helps small businesses improve operational efficiencies, reduce costs and manage risk. Since 2002, Opus has focused its business around asset lifecycle and business process management. As a Dell partner, it provides the Dell managed services platform to its customer base, as well as consulting and support. Its main area of focus is B.C., but it has reach across Western Canada and Ontario.

“Dell provides tier-one enterprise-class products at an affordable price point, in addition to the ability to custom-configure all of the products ourselves and the option of using Dell’s support infrastructure to augment our client services,” said Brown. “When we were in the process of selecting a partner, we compared all of the tier-one suppliers and Dell offered us the most complete and flexible package.”

For Opus, working with Dell isn’t just about replacing and upgrading hardware – it’s about a consultative business relationship. “Dell has an account team located in Vancouver and has developed a strong relationship with our sales team, and as a result there has been a cross-pollination of opportunities,” said Brown. “Dell helps us in recommending technology or process changes to make the technology work for our clients.”

For BCPVPA, Opus recommended implementing a Dell PowerEdgeTM 2950 server running Microsoft Hyper-V™, allowing them to virtualize Windows Small Business Server® 2008 Standard Edition. “By implementing a virtualized solution we were able to provide a disaster recovery solution in the event of a disaster,” said Brown. “We deployed an additional Dell PowerEdge 1950 as a management server, which runs the Microsoft Hyper-V management tools, as well as additional management tools used in the environment.”

Opus re-deployed existing Dell PowerEdge servers as a Terminal Server running on Windows® Server 2008 and created TS desktops for all 15 users, allowing them to create a standardized set of desktops with all the productivity tools used by the staff. This eliminated many of the issues associated with staff reconfiguring the environment.

Because several members of the association work from home on a regular basis, the Remote Web Workplace feature in Windows Small Business Server 2008 solved many of their challenges with remotely accessing documents and corporate information. It also improved communications for employees on the road, allowing for secure access to e-mail and data.

In addition, Opus discovered an opportunity to assist the association with improving workflow for a specific task, which was an entirely manual process dependent on a single person to maintain a set of records in paper form. “That was a huge single point of failure,” said Brown. “Only one person had true knowledge of how this whole process worked, such as where the documentation was and how to find it. If she got sick or went on holidays, things went into limbo until she got back.”

Opus recommended Microsoft® Office SharePoint Server 2007 Services, and its development team has been working on a custom application built with SharePoint to create new cases, archive documents, track information and make searching for that information much easier.

“Dell is the only hardware platform we sell and Microsoft® Office is the only productivity suite we recommend,” said Brown. “That’s what we build our business on, and those partners lend additional credibility to our organization.”

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