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Case Study: The Quarto Group, Inc

"I am reliant on the electronic eyes of Sonar because we don't have IT staff in most of our locations. Our IT manager is a Datrix employee. He uses Sonar to look after 200 desktop computers - PCs and Mac's - and 20 Windows servers, over our four UK sites.

Our principle is that IT should not be a burden or an interruption to our business. We need to do things profitably, expeditiously. Hardware, software, support, and the providers, all have to be arranged so they are not an impediment, so they don't impair business performance. Those four things have to be in balance. When we have the right hardware, software and the suppliers we need, Sonar is to keep the even keel.

With our old support arrangement, there were conflicts because the machines were not properly configured and the IT resource was not always available at short notice. That sort of thing was a problem.

Sonar is a great idea. It maintains the computers and tells you when something goes out of kilter. Users won't suffer a problem because Sonar sends alarms before problems happen.

Do I get a benefit from having no interruptions to my business? Do I get a benefit from being able to monitor the health of a computer network, even to confirm its healthy? Of course I do.

Some IT problems happen below the visible level and accumulate. You start to get intermittent faults and a gradual deterioration of performance. I wanted to be able to see when things were not working and say, "Right, I'm preventing an IT failure by stopping the degradation".

When Sonar senses there's a problem brewing, it targets our resources so we can bring our IT performance to an operational level. So our users will not be disadvantaged. And our support people know everything is in working order because Sonar tells them.

On top of that, Sonar will help us to make investment decisions because it maintains an audit of our equipment. So when a piece of kit starts to get old and to be limited, Sonar will tell us we'll have to replace it. It's knowing how to plan your resources, your hardware resources and your people resources.

Sonar means that I'm not wasting time, that I can plan and direct my resources more effectively. I need our new equipment to stay in good condition for the next three to four years. We will rely on Sonar to keep our performance up to a level. Things will go awry in the background, because things always do - because users are using their machines and you can't tie everything down. Productivity will be improved. It will ensure downtime will be reduced. The feedback from users is that it has improved."

Michael Clarke, Head of Operational and Business Research, The Quarto Group, Inc.