Vista Center offers a comprehensive array of services for visually impaired or blind individuals including evaluation, counseling, education, and training. The Center’s core mission is to empower and enable visually impaired and blind individuals to live life to the fullest. Over the past several years, Vista Center has experienced significant growth, enabling the organization to expand its range of services and serve a growing number of clients.
The Challenge: Outdated infrastructure managed by an unresponsive MSP
With much of its infrastructure on-premises and outdated, Vista Center was ready for digital transformation. Communication with their Managed Service Provider (MSP) was lacking, and the level of support provided was insufficient for Vista Center’s needs. The Center’s Director, Karae Lisle, felt that the MSP was maintaining the infrastructure, but not providing much guidance. The MSP’s service model seemed to be one of waiting for issues to become problems before they would act.
Lastly, the Center was grappling with an unreliable Internet Service Provider (ISP). For instance, their ISP would shut down the network for updates without advance notice and cause business disruptions.
Faced with these challenges, Vista Center’s leadership saw the necessity of finding a technology partner better suited to meet their needs. Their experience with an unresponsive MSP made Lisle realize the Vista Center needed a proactive technology partner. What Vista Center wanted was a thought partner that could evaluate its current technological landscape and craft an IT roadmap to guide it toward Lisle’s goals.
The Solution: Digital transformation strategy and cloud migration
When Vista Center engaged with Xantrion, the team’s first step was to evaluate Vista Center’s technology infrastructure and challenges. They took that information and used it to create an IT roadmap specifically for Vista Center.
Based on their plan, the team’s next step was to move the Center’s on-site infrastructure into the cloud. The previous MSP did not offer much support during the transition and Vista Center fell victim to a crypto attack during this phase. Fortunately, there were viable backups and Xantrion was able to restore their environment, but this situation underscored their need to move to a more secure and fully monitored cloud environment.
Xantrion moved Vista Center’s documentation into SharePoint and was able to connect their printers to the network, ending their printer headaches. Currently, the Xantrion team is working to move them to a new, more reliable ISP to address their issue with service interruptions.
The Outcome: Improved connectivity, accessibility, and communication
Vista Center Community Relations & Operations Associate, Neeraj Gupta says his experience of working with Xantrion is fantastic. He feels confident and comfortable in the knowledge that everything is taken care of, inventory is up-to-date, and any important documentation is available in SharePoint. Communication has improved dramatically: he meets with the Xantrion team bi-weekly to plan and discuss ongoing work.
The Xantrion team also takes into consideration the accessibility needs of Vista Center’s employees and clients. If something is not accessible for any reason, the Xantrion team will find a way to make it accessible. For example, if a PDF cannot be interpreted by Gupta’s optical character recognition (OCR) system, the team will adjust the PDF so that all content can be read by the OCR system. Additionally, if he ever has a question about a contract or needs clarification, the Xantrion team will make every effort to make the contract clear and bring understanding.
In the words of Vista Center Director, Karae Lisle,” We are elated with the thoughtful, inclusive approach Xantrion takes to supporting Vista!!”