SMB LaRosa's Pizzeria Tosses Old Network for Reliable, Redundant Cisco Solution with PCMS IT Advisor Group

Founded in 1954, LaRosa's Pizzeria established itself as the number-one pizza company in Greater Cincinnati, and its corporate-owned and franchised stores have spread to Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana.

With 59 stores in three states and several thousand employees, LaRosa's looks like a big enterprise. But with just 200 users on its network, the IT department identifies with the challenges of small and medium-sized businesses. Network bandwidth limitations caused slow response time, and the connection for part of its headquarters building was very limited. When the core networking switch failed every phoned-in or online pizza order, which goes through LaRosa's central call center and routed to the closest store, was lost. When the network failed LaRosa's estimates it lost nearly $175,000 in revenue in one night.

"We had been limping along with bandwidth issues, but the lost revenue really got management's attention," says Kyle Welch, network engineer for LaRosa's. "We committed ourselves to overhauling our network and started looking for a vendor to rely on for any network-related projects."

LaRosa's invited selected vendors, including PCMS IT Advisor Group, a Cisco SMB Select partner, perform a network audit. PCMS IT Advisor Group is committed to the technology needs of the SMB marketplace. It builds long-term relationships with its customers and partners, and does the "heavy lifting" of technology allowing customers to focus on their core business.

"We've always preached that infrastructure is the most important part of any new network," says Jason Wingert, technical services manager for PCMS IT Advisor Group. "The needs of SMBs are more customized, so our engineers are up on the very latest technology. Cisco offers its SMB Select partners a good set of budget programs and competitive discounts. We partner with Cisco to do regular seminars in the area, and Cisco representatives are always available to help."

Wingert was impressed with LaRosa's approach toward outsourcing this project. "Every company bidding on the project performed a network audit, so when LaRosa's chose its vendor, the product roadmap was already laid out," he says.

The PCMS IT Advisor Group audit highlighted how the existing mesh solution of different vendors was not optimal for business, and outlined network problems in store for the company if it didn't re-think its network strategy. They recommended to LaRosa's a Cisco redundantly switched infrastructure including four Cisco stacks with new uplink technology. The two floors of the headquarters building, which had connection headaches in the past, would be connected via a six-gigabyte infrastructure connection.

In choosing a vendor to deploy the new network for LaRosa's, Welch found PCMS most appealing because its staff was knowledgeable and easy to work with. PCMS' focus on SMB was also key, noting it was often difficult to reach an engineer at larger firms.

"Our network outage effectively shut down our call center and cost the company real dollars," says Welch. "We learned that you get what you pay for, and every piece of Cisco equipment I've worked with has never had a problem. I was extremely confident that we made the right vendor choice."

With the PCMS/Cisco roadmap to success already laid out during the network audit, preparation time was minimized, and the network cutover process was about eight hours with no network downtime.

LaRosa's no longer worries about lost orders because its call center has built-in redundancy in the Cisco network. The network users accessing needed resources 10 times faster than previously, and email downloads in a flash. Additionally, the LaRosa's Web site that used to be hosted via remote locations can be brought in-house for more savings thanks to redundant core network deployed by PCMS IT Advisor Group.

The network success enjoyed by LaRosa's is typical for PCMS IT Advisor Group, which built its business on understanding the specific needs of SMB customers. The company sees increased spending in the SMB area, and is undergoing more Cisco projects than ever.

"We're in a major upswing and infrastructure is a big focus of our SMB clients," says Wingert. Another SMB need is in the security area, he says, noting that many small and medium sized businesses may have good vendor hardware but not know how to use it.

"With SMBs, there is little focus on security other than the perimeter," he says. "Internal, router level security seems to be an afterthought. We perform free network audits to show these companies where the holes are and how they can be fixed. They can take our audits to someone else if they want, but usually performing the audit and showing a timeline creates a partnership."

And partnership, according to PCMS IT Advisor Group, is what the SMB market is looking for.

"SMBs are looking for a real technology partnership, not just an equipment provider," says Terrin Williams, marketing manager for PCMS IT Advisor Group. "Typical SMB internal network staff are generalists and don't have the time to focus on individual technologies, so we make sure to align ourselves with specialists in every area."