Destra Capital Migrates To Hosted Cloud In New Chicago Offices

THE CHALLENGE

Move to Chicago Inspires Migration to Secure Cloud Services

Two days before James Yount, President and Senior Managing Director at Destra Capital was about to move the investment firm from Lisle to Chicago, he discovered a startling revelation: there would be no room for the company’s servers in the new shared office space.

Destra Capital had certainly been discussing moving to the cloud, but now the timetable for migration had moved up. This needed to happen pronto!

The company had been managing for years with a single full-time staff member who was kept busy with IT infrastructure management, including on-site servers.

As the company grew, it was clear that a sole IT resource would not be able to handle their needs, especially from a security standpoint. Although their in-house IT director would remain, they knew it was time to bring in outside help.

The move to the new Chicago offices made them rethink their IT support model and technology strategy, especially when it came to finding a solution that would offer increased protection against cyber threats.

“We wanted to move to a managed service provider (MSP) that could handle all our services from an IT standpoint,” Yount said. “As security and compliance are a critical items for a financial services company, we decided outsourcing would be our best option to get the expertise we needed."

Destra Capital has specific regulatory compliance requirements from the SEC and FINRA to keep data safe, to manage continuous backups, and a specific protocol for QuickBooks. The latter must be accessed from several different people at different locations at different times.

“We wanted the experience for our remote staff, who utilize QuickBooks and other cloud applications, to be seamless and secure,” said Yount.

THE SOLUTION

Managed Cloud IT Services Offers Increased Security

According to Yount, Ntiva came up with a good solution in a short period of time: move to a fully hosted cloud solution using thin client technology, dumb terminals with a monitor, mouse, and a small box that Yount describes as “the size of two glass cases with a couple ports on the back.”

Unlike PCs, which are full functioning machines, thin terminals don’t have a CPU to process information. Destra Capital’s entire network—data, email and applications—are accessed in the cloud via an Internet connection.

Ntiva also provided the firm with the necessary cloud security to keep their data safe.

All (of our) people are doing their jobs without any servers or desktops in our office,” said Yount. “They can connect to the desktop on phones, Androids, laptops, anything. I have external salespeople who can now log on remotely and still receive security updates.”

THE IMPACT

Improved Collaboration, Security, Backup and Disaster Recovery 

Going fully cloud based was not Destra Capital’s first plan.

However, with the sudden move, it made sense. Traditional tasks like printing, email, word documents and data backup are all routed through the server in the cloud.

"You don’t have to worry about a computer getting stolen, a hard drive crashing or losing your information now,” explained Yount. “With the thin clients we don’t need laptops or desktops anymore.”

Departments like accounting, legal, compliance, product and marketing all have secure access to the server.

Collaboration ranks high on Yount’s list of benefits for cloud computing.

Thanks to Microsoft Teams, “Our marketing department can work on documents, and somebody else can review them and store them in folders in the cloud. It’s a great opportunity for other industries as well, who deal in complexity, numbers, and require remote collaboration."

"We are not going to look for a different solution—this is a permanent solution for us. It’s easy to not have the servers anymore and have Ntiva monitor our systems and manage backup.”

Those backup services include disaster recovery, which can literally save your business. Backup and disaster recovery can be a massive source of stress for any business owner. Ntiva’s off-site data storage ensures that, even in the event of a natural disaster, your data will never be lost.

“Being a small company and having a bigger company like Ntiva, who provides us with our outsourced IT, was a great find,” said Yount decisively. “Their help desk is very responsive … they worked their tails off to get us moved to the cloud in a timely manner. We were under the gun. They came up with a great solution, quickly."