Case Studies

Large national company - security breach and system lock-down

IT Place was contacted by a large not-for-profit national organisation with an in-house IT department. The company had experienced a major security breach and their main services were affected including emails, SharePoint and accounting software.

The organization had contacted another large Brisbane based IT firm to assist, however, they were unable to resolve the issue. IT place was able to identify the issue and used out of the box thinking to resolve the problem within 24 hours. The organisation was able to resume their business activities with minimal downtime.

Once the organisation was back online it was identified that the 150 users were unable to send and receive emails. After assessing the current system, IT Place recommending installing a new system to run in parallel to the existing system. Once the new system was up and running the data was migrated to the new system. This provided a highly efficient and highly available system. This new system was also better integrated with other Microsoft Technologies, such as SharePoint and SQL servers. Users were also able to access their emails on their mobile devices.

IT Place also helped the organisation set up backups for their Exchange and SQL server infrastructure. IT place continued to assist the organisation until the in house IT department was able to take over.

Growing business - moved to Cloud solutions

Our client was looking to improve efficiency in the workplace, move to a cloud-based solution, and particularly wanted to be able to collaborate online.

IT place provided tailored advice and the pros and cons of various cloud solutions.

Once a solutions was chosen by the client, IT place configured the cloud-based solution with user emails, calendar sharing and document management. After successfully migrating the required data IT Place provided the organisation with training on how to make the most of the new solution.

Work was completed over the weekend to minimise downtime to the organisation. The organisation is now running more efficiency and enjoying the ability to collaborate in real time online.

Giving back to the community

A not-for-profit community organisation required a solution to display upcoming events and important information on the screens located in their community center. IT Place volunteers on an ongoing basis. IT Place developed a custom-made web-based solution using technologies such as PHP and MySQL which do not cost the centre any ongoing subscription fees.

Back and front end interfaces were created so management can easily add and display upcoming events and important announcements on the screens. The solution was also configured to be accessed remotely.

The center is used as a meeting place for community events, domestic violence sessions and English classes.

Growing existing Network Infrastructure to meet demand

One of IT Place's clients in hospitality industry saw sudden growth in automated services with delay sensitive applications at their venue. As the new services were getting commissioned, the client started experiencing connectivity issues. The switching infrastructure at that time consisted of five Gigabit switches which were configured with no switching loop prevention and inter-switch connectivity was sub-optimal. Due to this client was experiencing random connectivity drop outs which was effecting their ability to provide services to their customers.

With the help from IT Place, the client was able to downsize the total number of switches to three and IT Place further improved the switching infrastructure as follows

      • Implemented VLANS and QoS to separate and improve throughput and security for the network traffic.
      • L3 switches were implemented for inter- vlan traffic routing in order to take the load off from the firewalls.
      • Switches were connected using high bandwidth channels ranging from 2 channels to 4 channels depending on the switch functionality within the network.
      • Wifi network was improved to accommodate more clients, high bandwidth channel was setup for increased traffic and QoS. Now client's customers are able to enjoy video and audio streaming without buffering.
      • Firewall policies were implemented so that various common black listed traffic were blocked from internal and Wifi network. This further improved the overall network throughout.

With the above implementation, the slow connectivity issues and sudden drop outs were eradicated from the network infrastructure.