An Atlanta-based oral surgery practice with over a dozen offices spread throughout the north metro and surrounding north Georgia area faced the daunting task of Internet-enabling their offices securely and deploying PCs and network-based printing ahead of a short rollout schedule of their new Internet-based practice management system. Cohn Consulting Corporation provided the firewall hardware and managed the rollout, installing and configuring all the equipment ahead of the software vendor’s deployment schedule. The practice was able to concentrate on all other aspects of the practice management migration, secure in the knowledge that their IT infrastructure was in good hands

The Challenge

An oral surgery practice faced the task of rolling out PC’s and associated office equipment and protected Internet connections to over a dozen of their practice offices ahead of an aggressive rollout schedule from their application service provider (ASP) based practice management system. The practice had to have all the new hardware in place with secure Internet connections at all offices to meet the “go-live” date with their practice’s data.

The Solution

Cohn Consulting Corporation relieved the practice of the worry of meeting the schedule. We managed the entire rollout for the customer, permitting them to focus on the other, non-IT related aspects of the implementation.

Cohn Consulting Corporation coordinated the data communications turn-ups with the data vendor for the practice’s branch offices and validated all the Internet turn-ups.

Sonicwall firewalls and Ethernet switches were provided by Cohn Consulting and installed at all office locations. Cohn Consulting Corporation installed PCs and printers supplied by both the practice and software vendor. All the PCs were brought up to current software levels with operating system and security patches, and each office network was configured to operate independently while still preserving the ability for the entire practice to be integrated in a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in the future with no configuration rework needed. Every PC was validated for the software vendor’s application and all local printing resources. Antivirus software was installed on all PCs.

The Result

Cohn Consulting Corporation beat the schedule. The senior partner in the practice said they could have not gone live on time without the efforts of Cohn Consulting Corporation.

In under six weeks, while maintaining responsiveness to our other clients, Cohn Consulting Corporation:

• Installed over 60 PC’s, verifying the software vendor’s configuration and application met their requirements
• Installed more than two dozen networked printers
• Installed a dozen firewalls, providing the practice offices with secure Internet connections and taking concrete first steps toward HIPAA security compliance.
• Rolled out managed antivirus services to all practice PCs, monitored from a server in their corporate office.