Sigfusson cuts IT costs in half with move to Dell

The company’s diversified work record includes road construction, crushing, mine site restoration, earth and rock excavation, lagoon and trailing dam construction, exploration services, wetland conservation projects for Ducks Unlimited, sewer and water projects, as well as transportation.

Previously, Sigfusson Northern Ltd. had been relying on service contracts with third-party IT service providers and renting server space at a hosted data centre, which it paid for on a monthly subscription basis.

“We were looking to get our operating costs down,” said Chris Sawatsky, IT manager with Sigfusson Northern Ltd., based in Lundar, Man. “So we evaluated whether it would be more cost-effective to have in-house IT equipment and staff, rather than relying on service contracts.”

Sawatsky, who had established a relationship with Dell in a previous job, was interested to see what Dell could bring to the table. After determining the company’s business needs, Dell came up with a solution based on Dell OptiPlexTM workstations, Dell LatitudeTM notebooks, Dell PowerEdgeTM 710 servers, Dell PowerConnectTM switches and a Dell EqualLogicTM SAN, as well as UPS power supplies.

“I prefer the interface of the Dell SAN to its competitors, and I was impressed with the Dell server products and knew they’d work for us,” said Sawatsky. The company is also using Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 and the Microsoft Office suite of applications, as well as Microsoft Hyper-V for virtualization. “Hyper-V comes in at a really nice price point. And I previously worked with Microsoft Virtual Server and was impressed with it.”

As a result of making the switch from an entirely hosted IT environment to an in-house Dell infrastructure, Sigfusson Northern Ltd. will be cutting its annual IT operating budget in half – even with the purchase of new equipment.

“It’s all easy sailing from here,” said Sawatsky. “And by taking care of our own IT infrastructure in-house, we’re able to determine our own priorities and we don’t have to wait in line behind other customers. If the boss needs something done right now, I can do it right now.”

Support was also a priority, since Sawatsky is the sole person in the company’s IT department. “I’m always amazed by how short the waiting period is between when I start calling and when I actually get to talk to someone,” he said. “The Dell tech support team is knowledgeable and able to recommend industry best practices on how to implement these technologies.”

As part of its disaster recovery strategy, for example, Sigfusson Northern Ltd. was looking for a single piece of hardware with the capability of adding a second server for redundancy, which is where the SAN came into play. Previously its disaster recovery strategy was planned and managed by a third-party service provider, which turned out to be more expensive than its current in-house solution from Dell.

The transition over to Dell turned out to be a smooth transition. “I’d be surprised if any of our users even knew what was going on, other than the ones who see we’re paying fewer bills,” said Sawatsky. “As our business expands, our needs will expand, and we’ll be looking to Dell as our premier source for all technology.”

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