University of Miami Reveals the Benefits and Challenges of IT Consolidation

Bomgar also ended up virtually eliminating the need for onsite visits. For example, prior to implementing Bomgar, a technician had to be dispatched to a classroom in session and consumed valuable time in transit, while the professor and students were waiting, only to be met with an interruption once the technician arrived.

Now, the technician is able to immediately connect to the device remotely and fix the issue with limited classroom interruption. The result is a much faster resolution with limited disruption.

Once these tools were put in place, we focused on the processes to utilize them.

One of the improvements we made was to cross-train employees so that each technician’s capabilities were much more diverse than in the previous IT model. This led to faster resolution times with service requests, and enabled us to offer 24/7 tech support. This is incredibly important because university faculty, staff, and students do not strictly operate during business hours.

We also support several satellite campuses that benefit from the ability to get immediate support whenever they need it. We can now support any user – anywhere in the world – even if they are not on the university’s Virtual Private Network (VPN).

We also had the added complexity of supporting the university’s Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine.

Bomgar enabled us to do that through our normal processes, as it adheres to all of the privacy and security regulations needed in a healthcare environment. Bomgar’s Jump Client feature allows us to perform routine maintenance on medical devices when they are not in use.

The added benefit is that we are able to extend that level of security to the rest of the university as well. Thousands of faculty, staff, and students depend on us to handle their sensitive information – so it is important that we do everything possible to keep that information secure.

Since consolidating our network and IT systems university-wide, we’ve been far more efficient at solving our community’s technical issues.

Time-to-resolve for incidents has consistently dropped, and our around-the-clock support has minimized downtime. Everyone from IT, support technicians to university students, has benefitted from the changes.

It took about one and a half years to fully consolidate and streamline operations, but it has left us with a much more efficient and scalable approach to IT management.

These positive changes will enable us to meet the future needs of the university as it continues to grow and evolve.
Rocky Pedroso is a Director of Information Technology at the University of Miami. Over the past 8 years, he has built a reputation for himself in Academic, Research, and Healthcare IT through developing and implementing successful IT service desk strategies and ITSM enhancements. Recently, he has developed a Service Management team which includes a continual service improvement initiative. He aims to continually identify and implement process improvements that reflect organizational missions and priorities.