Distinguished Builder Constructs Reliable Technology Foundation with IT Solutions

When it comes to quality home construction, New Jersey’s Paramount Homes considers itself second to none. Founded in 1995, Paramount’s guiding principle is “Reaching for Excellence” and that’s apparent in everything they do, from luxurious single family homes to urban redevelopment areas to active adult lifestyle communities.

• Paramount Homes utilized eight remote office locations, which created connectivity and data management challenges, hindering efficient centralized operations.
• Paramount needed to explore a robust backup and disaster recovery solution to mitigate risks associated with data loss and extended downtime in the event of a catastrophic event.
• Their decentralized network infrastructure led to fragmented data storage, making it difficult to manage backups and ensure data recovery in case of emergencies.
• Paramount had limited control over email monitoring and management, leading to security and operational concerns.
• The company incurred significant maintenance costs associated with managing multiple systems across remote offices.

Based on IT Solutions’ extensive experience with the Windows Server product line and numerous remote office integration projects, Paramount hired ITS to address the challenges through a two-phased project approach.

First, the ISP-hosted e-mail solution was replaced with a Microsoft Exchange 2003 system. By bringing mail hosting in-house, Paramount saw immediate benefits with improved communications and increased collaboration. With Exchange and the corresponding Outlook client available to all users, e-mail was now easily monitored and controlled internally. And users could share and update each other’s calendars, contacts, and tasks.

Phase 2 involved the implementation of a site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) configured using Cisco Pix Firewalls. ITS accomplished the integration of the eight remote offices with a single domain hosted at the main office. The complete centralization of the network on Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 servers facilitates unified data storage, backups and disaster recovery. For daily tape backup, a large-volume, high-speed LTO drive was installed.

For added security and ongoing preventative maintenance of the entire network, Paramount enrolled in IT Solutions’ fully managed IT plan. What attracted Paramount to this was comprehensive coverage for both servers and workstations at a predictable flat-fee cost.

The deciding factor was the inclusion of the ITS DataVault at no additional charge. DataVault’s ability to do daily monitoring and management of disk-to-disk backup jobs using existing backup software filled the remaining gaps in Paramount’s need to be able to recover quickly from any catastrophic event.

In centralizing e-mail, backups, and network security to one location and on complimentary platforms, Paramount Homes has eliminated the inefficiencies and risks that were costly and a source of frustration for the company in the past. By choosing ITS SharedVision, Paramount has the added benefits of 24/7 support from highly experienced Microsoft certified engineers. The team’s constant monitoring of the network keeps costs and downtime under control.