How Fair Oaks Motors Adopts a User-friendly IT Infrastructure that Supports Business 7 Days a Week
About Fair Oaks Motors
Fair Oaks Motors is a family-owned Virginia-based car dealership offering Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram products and services.
The Challenge
Fair Oaks Motors has been a client of ours since 2005. Prior to working with Ciracom Cloud, Fair Oaks Motors had been running their own in-house Microsoft Exchange Server and found maintenance to be a burden. Their previous email exchange system was not user-friendly and difficult to manage, and it required additional fees to access it using mobile phones. The dealership managed too many manual processes (such as resetting passwords) and lacked proper security policies. Moreover, employees experienced intermittent internet outages that disrupted the seven-day-a-week operation.
The Solution
Ciracom Cloud helped in the following ways:
- Empowered employees with the enterprise-class tools
- Improved Internet connection
- Enhanced security
Testimonial
“We essentially have to go looking for problems if we want to stump Ciracom Cloud. Ciracom Cloud is full of forward-thinkers. They set up ease-of-use processes for us whenever we’ve needed them, and they’re extremely reliable. They get the right equipment and the right people with the right technical knowledge to get the job done the first time, every time.” - Alan Brown: K & R’s former Chief Financial Officer
Empowered employees with the enterprise-class tools
Ciracom Cloud provisioned Fair Oaks Motors’ managers with Microsoft 365 Business Premium that also came with Multi-Factor Authentication for added security, Microsoft 365 Business Standard for its sales personnel, and Microsoft 365 Business Basic for the rest of its employees. With these licenses, Fair Oaks Motors employees are not only granted bigger mailboxes, but self-service password reset. Additionally, a Business Premium subscription allows two-way password sync between their Active Directory and Office 365, thus permitting password reset even outside the office.
Improved internet connection
To prevent the poor and unstable network connection from going down, Ciracom Cloud deployed Bigleaf Networks, which provides users with static public IP addresses that do not change when internet traffic gets interrupted and moves between ISP connections.
Ciracom Cloud made two other important improvements: technicians enabled content filtering and blocking website categories using Cisco Umbrella and Cisco Meraki. Cisco Umbrella resolved issues when some staff went to non-work-related websites. And Cisco Meraki provided an excellent Wi-Fi signal throughout the office while also tracking internet activity.
Enhanced security
Fair Oaks Motors had been using old on-premises servers that were acting as a backup domain controller. The operating system relied on outdated software, making it a security liability. To solve these issues, Ciracom Cloud created an Azure virtual network and a virtual server running Windows. It also provided domain controller software, which gave Fair Oaks Motors a better disaster recovery systems.
Because Fair Oaks Motors stores credit card data for its clients, the organization must be PCI-compliant (Payment Card Industry) and follow certain technical and operational standards. Ciracom Cloud helped create a secure environment to protect credit cardholder data.
Additionally, Ciracom Cloud established an Office 365 retention policy so that if any workstations unfortunately stop working, documents can easily be retrieved. Moreover, Ciracom Cloud ensures that Fair Oaks Motors’ servers are being backed up on a regular basis.
The Impact
By deploying Microsoft subscription plans and improving network connections, Fair Oaks Motors employees are now able to easily reset passwords and work in a non-disruptive workplace environment. The company was able to save on costs and simplify their IT.
By establishing an Azure virtual network and creating a virtual server to replace old on-premises servers, all files and data are now properly backed up and Fair Oaks Motors is in a safer and a more secure position. Ciracom Cloud provided Fair Oaks Motors with the right tools in a cost-effective way.
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