Moraine Valley Community College Case Study

Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC) is located in Chicago’s southwestern suburb of Palos Hills, Illinois. Founded in 1967, the school enrolls more than 34,000 students serving 26 communities annually and is one of the largest community colleges in the state.

Susan G. is the Director of Network Operations, Computing Services and Telecommunications. She oversees all wired and wireless networks, virtual server environments, storage, telecom, and ERP infrastructure. These responsibilities also include email and other critical applications.

Moraine Valley Community College’s Challenges

For Ms. G.’s team, it was pertinent to find a hardware support solution that would fit shrinking budgets. MVCC maintains two separate Storage Area Network (SAN) environments that supports the college’s ERP system and other applications. Although Ms. G had a team member who could support IBM AIX, finding a staff member to support hardware was a challenge.

“The biggest challenge the college currently has is supporting two separate environments. Finding the right talent to support AIX and the IBM SAN environment is difficult. It is hard to compete with salaries offered in Corporate America for this talent. As a result, we seem to always be short of staff to support the most critical applications on campus,” Ms. G said.

Another factor that played into MVCC’s challenges was an affordable Service Level Agreement. Ms. G. said, “Our ideal hardware maintenance solution is 24 x 7 x 4 hour response time. This can be very expensive when dealing directly with the original equipment manufacturers.”

With the need to support their SAN environments, and with a limited budget, Ms. G. began researching other support options. A former employee of MVCC had previous experience with third-party maintenance providers and was introduced to Park Place Technologies.

Choosing Park Place Technologies

Having never used any third-party maintenance providers for its data center hardware, MVCC researched several third-party maintainers and collected other competitive quotes as required by the college. Flexibility on budget was not an option. When MVCC made the switch to Park Place Technologies, the initial decision was based primarily on price and flexibility.

“The Park Place solution was convenient. Park Place worked along with MVCC to determine the right coverage for the variety of equipment we covered. They responded with a price point and SLA that the college was comfortable with, so we chose them over the other vendors,” Ms. G said. “The Park Place solution was convenient. Park Place worked along MVCC to determine the right coverage for the variety of equipment we covered. They responded with a price point and SLA that the college was comfortable with, so we chose them over the other vendors.”

Susan G.
Director of Network Operations

Case Study Key Points

Retains control of equipment lifecycle

Saved 70% on maintenance costs compared to the OEM

Provided an alternative for end of service life equipment

Low total cost of ownership

The Park Place Difference

Since starting their partnership with Park Place Technologies as a third-party maintenance provider, Ms. G. and her staff have been satisfied with their IBM storage equipment support. Some significant considerations that played a part into why MVCC continues to use Park Place Technologies as its hardware maintenance and support provider include:

Obtaining Administrative Ease

One of the major factors of choosing Park Place Technologies for MVCC was the endless flexibility it provided for its customers. “Park Place was willing to do whatever it was that we thought we needed—whether it is certain coverage on parts of the environment or different coverage on storage and some of the physical servers we support. It was total flexibility,” Ms. G. said.

Flexibility also extended into their contracts. With Park Place Technologies, MVCC could add or delete equipment at any time. “Not locking us into long contracts allowed us to be comfortable in making decisions on our storage equipment moving forward. That was huge!” Ms. G. added.

Receiving Exceptional Support

For MVCC, receiving support was quick and painless. Although support calls were few for its IBM storage environment, Ms. G.’s team member attested to the fact that the response from Park Place was quick and the field engineers were able to provide the MVCC IT team the appropriate solutions and documentation related to any issues it was having with its IBM storage devices.

Saving 70% on Maintenance Costs

Moraine Valley County Community College has saved about 70% in maintenance and support costs compared to standard OEM maintenance. This significant cost savings allowed peace of mind for budget concerns by Ms. G. and the IT team at MVCC.

The Future with Park Place Technologies

Ms. G and her team look to continue and expand their partnership with Park Place Technologies.

“Park Place has been very responsive to the needs of the college. They are proactive in their support and have lived up to their SLA. Fortunately, we have not seen a lot of problems with our IBM hardware, but we know we can count on Park Place to respond quickly to our needs,” Ms. G. said. “Park Place has been very responsive to the needs of the college. They are proactive in their support and have lived up to their SLA. Fortunately, we have not seen a lot of problems with our IBM hardware, but we know we can count on Park Place to respond quicky to our needs.”

Susan G.
Director of Network Operations

About Park Place Technologies

Park Place Technologies is your global data center and networking optimization firm. Powered by the world’s largest on-the-ground engineering team, a robust group of advanced engineers and our fully staffed, 24x7x365 Enterprise Operations Center, we offer a robust portfolio of IT solutions to optimize networking and data center Uptime and performance. Our services include third-party data center hardware maintenance, data center professional services, infrastructure managed services, network performance monitoring and IT hardware sales. Through our unique and fully integrated DMSO (Discover, Monitor, Support, Optimize) approach, customers enjoy streamlined infrastructure monitoring and management, cost efficiencies, less chaos, and faster mean-time-to-resolution – ultimately providing the freedom to think bigger. Park Place’s industry-leading and award-winning services include Park Place Hardware Maintenance™, Park Place Professional Services™, ParkView Managed Services™, Entuity Software™ and Curvature Hardware sales.

For more information, visit ugif.0531-it.com. Park Place is a portfolio company of Charlesbank Capital Partners and GTCR.