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Case Study: East Meets West Foundation

The Organization

The East Meets West Foundation (EMW) is “the foundation for learning, healing and health." EMW's work reflects the belief that every person deserves access to clean water, proper medical treatment and a solid education. Without these fundamental elements of a good life, children cannot thrive and adults cannot be fully productive members of society.

Founded in 1988, EMW has a 20-year track record of innovative and effective work in Vietnam and a vast portfolio of completed projects. EMW projects and programs are known for their high quality, long-term sustainability, emphasis on results and significant scale.

The Situation Today

Many non-profits face the challenge of having limited resources for technology, in a complex world where automation is crucial to survival.  The mission, of course, is to fund the programs.  Frequently, whatever technology exists consists of a hodge-podge of ill-suited, donated, legacy parts that over the course of time, cost more to keep operational than new equipment might have at the onset.  Generally someone within the organization is appointed to be the “IT staff” but given no budget and no time to create a vision for the future.

The Challenge

With three offices in Viet Nam, and one in California, the frustration of working with non-integrated software, a network that went up and down daily and the inability of a committed staff to work remotely, even though they were willing to devote personal time in support of their mission, created a near melt-down for the East Meets West staff in late 2005. Keeping the accounting data synched between the offices was a major headache.

The Choice

When East Meets West (EMW) decided to seek outside professional services, they took the very logical approach of asking for referrals from some of their other vendors, colleagues and competitors. TSG Networks was named multiple times as an experienced professional IT services company, savvy in the special needs of non-profits.

TSG met with the EMW management team and listened carefully to the mandatory, the logical, and even the far-fetched “wish list” goals EMW wanted to achieve. Drawing upon almost three decades of experience, TSG translated what was learned in those conversations into a three-year technology plan that respected EMW’s budget while outlining an encouraging growth path.

The Response

After performing a detailed audit of the existing equipment, it was clear that the capital outlay for replacing required equipment would be cost-prohibitive. Key elements, such as a firewall, were non-existent and the file server was a re-worked workstation class pc that was over 6 years old. Without a qualified in-house IT person, the costs for maintaining this environment were just not logical.

The Result

In September of 2005, TSG “on-boarded” EMW, providing brand new, state-of-the-art HP file servers housed in TSG’s network operation center (NOC). By employing Citrix software, the premiere virtualization and remote access software for delivering applications over a network and the Internet, EMW not only has stability, but scalability and 100% maintenance of their file servers at a fixed, budgetable rate, which amounts to a fraction of what they were paying to repeatedly band-aid the old equipment. For the first time, the accounting files are being updated real time from the overseas offices. The staff was most excited that they were now able to access their servers from home, on vacation—virtually anywhere that Internet is available.

EMW opted to combine TSG Desktop Assist with their hosting program. With unlimited helpdesk support via either telephone or email, users can get immediate response to just about any issue that comes up. Better still, more than 90% of the time TSG can resolve the issue remotely.

Twenty four months later, EMW went one step further and worked with TSG to move their environment into TSG’s state-of-the-art data center. EMW now operates as close to 100% up-time as one can get. They also added TSG Desktop Assist, a monitoring and preventative maintenance program that includes unlimited help-desk. Their costs for these services are equivalent to about half the cost of an in-house IT person. What were once far-fetched wish list items for EMW are now in process.