Bob Alire, network operations manager for the Rocklin, CA-based Intercare Insurance Services, first found Quest when he was looking for help with data center co-location services. In the five years since he has come to rely on Quest for many of his organization’s technology needs.
Intercare, with seven offices throughout California and one in Bellevue, WA, processes workers’ compensation claims for large municipalities including cities, counties, and school districts, as well as organizations in the private sector. For that reason, the company can’t allow its network to be vulnerable to natural disasters or power outages. A secure data center is an absolute requirement.
Alire recalls an incident when a power pole in the company's neighborhood was hit by a car - a simple accident that took out all of PG&E's local circuits - in their line of work, that is not acceptable.
Processing Claims with Reliable Tech Solutions and Support
Alire explains...
Samuel Merritt University (SMU), a California nursing college whose roots go back more than 100 years, is committed to the safety and security of its students, faculty, and staff and strives to provide the advanced technologies that deliver a first-rate education. Marcus Walton, the university’s Chief Information Officer, says Quest helps him achieve both of those objectives.
A few years ago, Walton recalls, someone was able to ride an elevator to an upper floor in a building on its Oakland campus, walk into an office, and steal a couple of laptops and a purse. Not a huge loss–but unacceptable.
At the time, SMU had already partnered with Quest for more than a decade on many of its technology needs. And in the years since, Quest has installed network surveillance cameras and smart ID-card readers that together allow Samuel Merritt’s physical security team to completely control access to every...
Allison Nunn, IT manager at Leggat McCall Properties, has dozens of people who depend on her to ensure the company’s infrastructure can keep everyone productive, 24/7. Initially, only in need of IT services and support, Nunn began working with Quest to keep their systems and software running and up to date. Based on the success of that initial engagement, Nunn then turned to Quest’s Application Development team to develop an application to automate an increasing number of tasks within the company. Using agile methodology, Quest continues to add features and functionality to the application today.
For more than 50 years, Leggat McCall Properties (LMP) has been a leading provider of real estate development, project management, and advisory services in the Boston real estate market. The company has built its reputation on delivering best-in-class services to a diverse portfolio of private, public, and nonprofit clients on their most complex and challenging...
Toni Gutierrez, Director of Information Technology at Sun Mar Healthcare, says it is essential that the communication systems at all 38 of the company's care facilities are fully operational at all times. She says that by working with Quest’s Unified Communications and Carrier Solutions, she can promise her patients and their families that they will never lose touch with the outside world.
Approximately five years ago, Sun Mar Healthcare received support from another vendor for its telecommunications needs. The level of service simply did not meet its expectations. As a result, Sun Mar engaged Quest in hopes of receiving the service necessary for their organization.
“In the skilled nursing home industry, we’re there to save people’s lives,“ Gutierrez says. “So, when our telephones aren’t working or our Internet is down, immediate action must be taken. Our facilities have to be in constant contact with hospitals, doctors, and families, so the...
When Tyler Anderson first started working at the Scott County Public Library (SCPL) in Georgetown, Kentucky, cybercrime had begun to spike worldwide, and cybersecurity was becoming a serious issue for many public and private institutions. Bad actors were burying malware on webpages, and antivirus protection was just beginning to move into the cloud.
While cybersecurity was becoming a big problem for technology-rich companies and organizations, it was not yet an issue for a small-town library in the American Southeast.
Ten years later, as the ranks of professional cybercriminals have exploded and cyberattacks have become ubiquitous, Anderson and his library must think about cybersecurity every day. That’s one key reason they work with Quest.
When he first came to the library, Anderson was the youngest member of the staff. He recalls that it was around the time the Kindle was gaining in popularity, and a big box of e-readers that had been donated...
Crédito Real USA Finance is bringing significant innovations to its organization as it focuses on providing financial solutions to segments of the population that have been underserved by traditional financial institutions. Technology is key to the company’s success in that mission. Scott Oliver, Chief Information Officer at Crédito Real USA Finance and a seasoned industry veteran, chose Quest as his application development and infrastructure support partner to help him achieve the company’s ambitious innovation goals.
Effective budget management depends upon on-demand IT expertise
After taking over as chief information officer (CIO) for Crédito Real USA Finance, a growing financial services company, Oliver set out to build an effective, efficient IT department that could deliver on the company’s innovation objectives. After attempting to build an in-house software development team to achieve those objectives, it became apparent a different approach was required.
His starting point was drawing clear distinctions between efforts that required...
Jim Connell, Chief Information Officer of Sierra Pacific Mortgage, says changes in his industry and escalating online threats make it mission-critical that his organization employ a vCISO to handle its cybersecurity. A vCISO (often pronounced “v-SEE-so”) is a virtual Chief Information Security Officer, and has become an important position in the cybersecurity industry.
As Sierra Pacific‘s vCISO, Quest’s Joe Hagerty takes a C-suite-level responsibility for the organization's entire security position. As the word “virtual” in the title implies, he is able to do so while saving Sierra Pacific the sizable expense of hiring an in-house CISO. While working as an employee of Quest, Hagerty is able to help Connell deliver fortified IT security thanks to an agreement in which he devotes two days a week to Sierra Pacific and essentially provides 24/7 emergency availability.
Connell says Sierra Pacific needs a partner with executive security experience partly because of...
Overlake Medical Center values Quest’s DR tabletop exercises to ensure patient safety and manage risk.
Not long ago, the IT team at Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, Washington gathered in a conference room for what they believed would be a seminar about transitioning to Windows 10. Instead, they were immediately told that they were in Disaster Recovery (DR) mode and would be live-testing their DR Runbook.
They were presented with a fictitious scenario: a regional earthquake in Eastern Washington. A data center had gone down, and the hospital’s IT infrastructure was at grave risk.
If such an event were to actually happen, having precise protocols in place and being prepared to take specific steps to prevent a catastrophe could be a matter of life and death.
Scott Connelly, Overlake’s Technology Manager, says ensuring that the hospital’s essential IT infrastructure is never compromised is central to the organization's mission.
“Patient care and safety is Overlake’s...
Troy Tingle, Instructional Technology Manager at Western Nevada College (WNC) in Carson City, NV recalls that just a few years ago, his audio video equipment included tower computers and Sony Trinitron TVs. Some instructors were still using 35mm slide projectors and DVD players that were pushed from classroom to classroom on a cart. Now, instructors are learning to run presentations in Zoom Rooms using their phones.
As he helped his organization transform its information technology infrastructure, Tingle is glad to have had the help of Quest’s Kevin Porsch and his Infrastructure Services team.
“Before we started working with Kevin,” Tingle says, “our IT department was dealing with constant problems, from lost remote controls to instructors whose laptops could not sync with the display screen in the classroom. Or an accounting professor would want to show spreadsheets using QuickBooks, and we didn’t have licenses for that software.”
Three years later,...
Adventist Health (Adventist) is one of the largest healthcare providers in the western United States, and its network just keeps getting bigger.
To accommodate that growth spurt, it needed a larger headquarters, but it was not just the organization's physical space that was in for an upgrade, Adventist needed to upgrade its data storage, and that meant migrating the terabytes of patient data that doctors and nurses use to make critical decisions.
“It was affecting the entire business and it needed to go smooth, because you can't afford an interruption in patient care at all,” said Carl Block, PMP, former Administrative Director for Core Technologies at Adventist Health.
Scaling storage up or down as required
The $4.5 million project aimed to build a co-located data center that would allow Adventist to scale its storage up as it acquired more locations or down as more data moved to the cloud,...
