The S. Hekemian Group Success Stories

PROTECTED HARBOR QUICKLY JUMPED IN TO PROVIDE 24/7 MONITORING

Protected Harbor Helps Real Estate Developer Overcome Server & ISP Challenges

Nationwide real estate developer, The S. Hekemian Group, contracted Protected Harbor to take over the management of its servers and ISP.

Sharon McGuire is an executive administrator at The S. Hekemian Group, and while she understands the company’s servers and software, she needed an IT team to help her set up and monitor both on a full-time basis. The S. Hekemian Group is one of the country’s most stable property owners and developers, with a highly selective portfolio of luxury residential, office, and mixed-use properties throughout the United States. While the real estate group has certainly built its reputation, they were lacking in their IT department.

Once McGuire contracted Protected Harbor, after being referred from another trusted vendor, she began to see the expertise of their staff with the de-installation and new installation for their main office relocation as well as the build, upgrade and maintenance of servers in other satellite offices.

Protected Harbor was also able to set-up server access for all of the S. Hekemian Group’s employees. Employees have access to servers via other means, including laptops, and if ever there is a problem, a ticket is placed to the Protected Harbor help desk and someone contacts them immediately.

McGuire also noted the ease of the Protected Harbor ticketing system for everyone in the company to use directly from their computer or laptop.

Another big problem identified when they began working with Protected Harbor, was the group’s lack of a reliable Internet Service Provider. Protected Harbor quickly jumped in to provide 24/7 monitoring of the fluctuating service provided by Hekemian’s ISP.

“Protected Harbor knows when I am down before I even know. I get a notification as soon as we are down, and another one as soon as they have us back up, so a lot of stuff is taken care of before we know it’s even a problem,” said McGuire.

Being a nationwide real estate developer, McGuire said the company has to keep its various software, from accounting to construction, up to date. The company relies on the expertise of Protected Harbor technicians and the company leadership to make sure they have the back-end capacity to house any new software they are considering.

“Protected Harbor handles a lot of stuff that other tech companies won’t or are not capable of,” said McGuire. “They ask all the right questions on our behalf to make sure we make the right choices when purchasing new software, which saves me an incredible amount of work and time so I can focus on other things for the company.”

Protected Harbor runs a daily back up of the company’s servers and makes sure the server is compatible with their software.

McGuire counts on Protected Harbor at all times – day or night – and remembers being in close contact with them during a major storm affecting their main office.

“If you surround yourself with good people, it makes your job a lot easier,” said McGuire. “Protected Harbor is tremendous; they really are tremendous.”