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Success Stories



Executive Summary
Company
  • The Magnet Group
Industry
  • Promotional Items
Business Challenge
  • Network redundancy and POE lacking
  • VMware infrastructure needed an
    upgrade
  • Internet access issues
  • Desired IM solution and phone system
    upgrade
Solution
  • Cisco 4510 chassis
  • Additional VMware server
  • Barracuda web filter appliance
  • Microsoft OCS 2007 server
Business Value
  • Data center infrastructure allows for
    redundancy and POE devices
  • Efficient use of VMware infrastructure
  • Secure IM solution for employee
    communication
  • Rights to internet usage set by active
    directory

The Magnet Group Partners with AOS to Solve Business Continuity Needs

The Magnet Group, based in Washington, MO, offers a wide selection of custom, specialty and template magnets as well as a variety of other promotional products including clocks, bags, crystal awards, and innovative items.

The Magnet Group is constantly updating available products and is on the cutting edge of trends. They have an entire catalog of eco‐friendly green items.

The Magnet Group partnered with AOS to accomplish several network and business goals. Their network backbone did not have any redundancy or POE capabilities, their VMware infrastructure needed an upgrade, and they desired to move internet access control off the firewall. Additionally, The Magnet Group wished to secure an easy instant messaging solution for employees as well as improve their phone system to meet call center needs.

AOS’ team presented a solution to include a Cisco 4510 chassis with POE and 4‐48 port blades for additional capacity and redundancy, adding an additional VMware server and migrating virtual servers to the new server, a Barracuda web filter appliance to handle internet access control, adding a Microsoft OCS 2007 server for internal IM, and a Cisco phone system to support the call center.

Michael Quinn, Senior Director of IT reports that The Magnet Group has “been able to upgrade the data center infrastructure to allow for redundancy and add capability for POE devices and future IP telephony needs. We will be able to use Virtual Center for VMware and migrate all out virtual servers to a newer more stable platform also giving us a development environment. The addition of a secure internal IM solution will provide a secure, controlled way for our employees to communicate without the risks of public IM. The Barracuda web filter appliance will allow us to collapse our extensive use of VLANs to control internet access and it will allow us to use the LDAP in active directory to set rights to internet usage.

Michael further added that “our design architect was fantastic and put together a solution that did everything we needed and maintained budget. AOS has a very tight relationship with their vendors allowing us to execute immediately.”