Manufacturing

How Flexibility Led to Cost Savings and Increased Production for a Leading Marine Company

This manufacturing company was faced with a challenge. Management had to move their AS/400 production and test environments out of their existing location due to the company’s divestiture, and they had to do it within months. Blue Hill began working with them at the beginning of the month, and an agreement was signed before month’s end.

Blue Hill saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars by hosting our systems as is, and not forcing us to upgrade to the latest hardware and software versions,” stated the IT Director.  “No other hosting provider would give us this flexibility – the other vendors required us to upgrade before they moved us. By using Blue Hill, we were able to save money and avoid additional costs that would have been incurred during the upgrade process. More importantly, we also saved a considerable amount of time and effort, and the risk of not knowing what we would find if we had to go through a lengthy upgrade process. Blue Hill’s solution allowed us to free up our resources to focus on projects that were critical to meeting our business priorities.”

We pride ourselves on our flexible approach for both services and contracts,” said John Lalli, COO and Managing Director, Blue Hill Data Services.  “We understand companies today need to get problems solved efficiently without being forced into situations’ that could potentially cost them a lot in time, money and resources. We have a unique ability to adapt quickly to a customer’s given challenge and build the right solution at a reasonable cost.”

The challenge was to find the hardware and software at the same operating levels this manufacturing company was currently running on, in the timeframe required. Blue Hill was the only service provider who could do this.

“Blue Hill said they would do it, that they had done this type of thing before,” says the IT Director. “They provided the legacy hardware and operating system software, and the right people who had this type of experience and expertise, and they were true to their word.”

Another challenge was to get the job done on time and on budget, and Blue Hill was able to do both. “When we started looking at managed services providers, I was looking for a data center that was close to us – proximity was key. We also wanted a provider who had been around for awhile, with a good track record, good connectivity, and staff who knew what they were doing. Blue Hill’s AS/400 team led by Mark Deeming, [Blue Hill’s Director of Midrange Services], is amazing,” said the IT Director.

“I found it astounding that only Blue Hill provided the flexibility and wanted to go the extra mile to accommodate our needs; other vendor models were more rigid. While other providers were telling us we needed to upgrade, Blue Hill made it seem easy. We had a great migration, and everything has been very smooth ever since. We are now able to focus on our real priorities.”  IT Director