“Cloudview is a true partner, not one of those vendors who’s only there to make money when I call on them. I knew I can always count on Cloudview to go above and beyond for my company, get any problem solved and get the job done. I could go to sleep with an issue on the table in the evening, and by the next morning Cloudview had it resolved. I’m truly looking forward to going forward with Cloudview on my mission critical services.”
Eric Benito, IT Director
Pinnacle Associates Ltd.
The Client
Pinnacle Associates is a financial investment firm in New York, NY. As one of the country’s top investment advisory firms, it oversees more than $6 billion in assets for its clients, including high net-worth individuals, government entities, foundations, corporations, and financial institutions.
The Ask
As COVID suddenly changed the face of office-based work, Pinnacle Associates’ employees and advisors had no option but to work from home. It became evident very quickly that the move was a positive one. Pinnacle had a unique and viable opportunity to rightsize their real-estate footprint in midtown Manhattan, retain smaller offices, and allow employees to work from home as much as they wanted.
However, to confidently move down this path, they had to get “work from anywhere” exactly right – meaning the user-experience had to be the same as if the employees were in the office. Performance and security were the key concerns. If the IT leadership could accomplish this goal, they could potentially enable saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate costs, improve their employees’ quality of life, increase productivity, and reduce commutes.
We were recommended to Pinnacle by one of their trusted consultants. Their vision was to create a comprehensive work-from-anywhere architecture and didn’t have time to waste. We got right to work!
Challenges
We started with detailed conversations with their employees since they are the ones who will use the systems every day. We wanted to know what was working for them, but more importantly, what was not. In the discovery process, we learned about several pain points that affected the user experience. For example, not all employees had equipment at home as they did in the office – such as advanced Wi-Fi, dual-monitors, scanners, etc. These user inputs informed many of our decisions going forward.
On the Technical Architecture front, we started with a deep-dive discovery of current-state – remote-access and VPN design, network connectivity, Citrix, applications, servers, data, licensing, authentication, M365 environment, and usage of Microsoft Teams.
Solution
In collaboration with the client’s IT leadership team, our team created a comprehensive Cloud-enabled work-from-anywhere architecture. This architecture addressed the right mix of on-prem vs. Cloud; fully leveraging the client’s existing investment in M365, detailed technical design to take the architecture to the next level, full clarity on the costs, and a remote work Playbook for employees, which clarified wireless setup, connectivity, workflows, printing, scanning, and productivity enhancements.
Success
As a result of the successful implementation of their work-from-home architecture, Pinnacle Associates was able to confidently go down the path of reconfiguring their midtown Manhattan real-estate footprint, saving big on real-estate costs. Overall, productivity improved as employees could work from anywhere using any device in a seamless fashion. Advisors appreciated having more flexibility and control over their commutes and being able to spend more time with their clients.