Case Studies
STRAHAN ASSOCIATES
Strahan Associates Turns to Time Warner Cable Business Class Raleigh Division for Secure Transmission and Storage of Architectural and Engineering Files
Background
Strahan Associates provides complete architectural and engineering services to clients throughout the United States. The firm specializes in the design of residential, commercial, recreational, and healthcare projects with a combined staff experience of over 70 years in these fields. Strahan Associates is comprised of professionals who work toward the common goals of design excellence and attention to detail. The firm has a staff of five in Raleigh, North Carolina, and a studio in Charleston, South Carolina.
Challenges
Strahan Associates had already moved beyond the old fashioned method of physically shipping blueprints back and forth to customers each time changes were made. However, the shift to electronic transfer of those blueprints (large CAD files) created a whole new set of challenges for Strahan. The company now needed a fast, easy and secure method to e-mail these documents, with up to 50 drawings per project.
An even bigger issue was Strahan’s desperate need for a secure and cost effective backup storage method for those blueprints. The company could not afford to lose those blueprints, their primary form of intellectual property, to theft, fire or any other kind of natural or man-made disasters. To safeguard against that, each week principal engineer Chuck Ladd was responsible for manually removing a computer drive, driving it three miles to his local bank and leaving it in a safe deposit box. Ladd hoped to update this data storage method by enabling the electronic transmission to a secure off-site location.
Last but certainly not least, Strahan wanted a service provider that would respond quickly and thoroughly to problems when they arose.
Solution
In addition to reliable, secure high speed bandwidth Time Warner Cable Business Class Raleigh Division provided Strahan Associates a solution called ViaRemote™, a fully-managed off-site backup and recovery service providing guaranteed data protection for servers and PCs. Using its bandwidth efficient storage technology, backups that used to take hours could now be completed in minutes to provide fast, cost-effective, worry-free protection for company data.
With automatic daily backups and user-initiated restores, ViaRemote™ provides Strahan with a fast, safe and easy backup storage solution. This approach ensures that all of Strahan’s data is centrally managed, protected and accessible – whenever and wherever they need it. Because ViaRemote™ includes all hardware, software, installation, provisioning and ongoing management, it was a quick, easy and cost-effective storage and data management solution for Strahan.
“Time Warner Cable Business Class ViaRemote™ has removed such a burden for us here at Strahan Associates,” explained Ladd. “It has not only eliminated the worry, but it has also freed up my time to focus more on customer facing, revenue generating services.”
In addition to meeting Strahan’s technology needs, Time Warner Cable Business Class Raleigh Division has exceeded the firm’s service expectations. “Unlike other service providers I had dealt with in the past, TWC is always responsive, knowledgeable and polite. To me, that is the difference between just a service provider and a true partner,” added Ladd.
