Oil and natural gas investment company REI Energy has seen major market changes over the years. As a privately owned company that acquires, operates, and maintains a range of assets and investment properties, they’ve had to make adjustments to stay agile and competitive in a fluctuating market. They currently sponsor partnerships for their investors in the major U.S. onshore producing basins, and their team of skilled experts operates these projects to maximize efficiency and profits.
Changes to REI Energy's investment strategies have also brought changes to its team. The company scaled its IT department down to one highly qualified professional. Danny Traugott's official title is Senior Systems Administrator, but he was juggling the responsibilities of CIO, network admin, desktop technician, and even facilities manager.
With no backup, Traugott handled every IT function 24/7, from tedious but necessary backups and complete server shutdowns to after-hours emergencies. If he was out of town when an issue arose, he frantically called around to patch together a solution until he returned.
To make the situation even more complex, the company was working with a sprawling legacy system. Whenever they ran out of storage space, the previous administration simply added another on-premises server. At one point, Traugott was running 24 or 25 servers, dreading any glitch that could lead to a crash.
Moving to cloud storage after investing in physical servers would have been more expensive, but Traugott knew they needed to downsize. In the restructuring process, they had outsourced services like accounting and website development, so there was already redundancy built into some of their critical systems.
With Traugott facing an unsustainable and overwhelming workload, REI Energy began looking to outsource some of its IT functions. They explored a handful of managed service providers and ultimately went with Sagiss, partly for the flexibility.
As an old-school IT admin, Traugott had been working with network systems since the days of manual backups on tape. Although digital backups are easier, he was tired of dealing with them and looking to offload the task. Some MSPs aren't willing to take on backups, but Sagiss took it completely in stride. They set up automatic on-site backups every night and weekly off-site backups for redundancy and disaster recovery.
Now, if Traugott needs something restored, he calls Sagiss to handle it. Sagiss also monitors REI Energy’s systems and notifies Traugott if something goes down, eliminating the need for in-house monitoring tools.
Traugott leans heavily on Sagiss for software migration projects too. During REI Energy's transition to Office 365 and Microsoft Teams, Sagiss set up a project plan and spearheaded implementation so Traugott didn’t have to uninstall and install software or work with a third-party vendor for licensing.
All of this means Traugott can enjoy his time off. If he’s on vacation, he can be fully present without the gnawing worry that he’ll have to deal with a catastrophe back at the office. However, he appreciates the flexibility of deciding when and how much support he wants to offload to Sagiss.
“I don’t have them doing any after-hours support," he said. "They only handle issues when I have the need for them to do so. If I’m going to be on vacation or whatnot, I will let them know to be ready.”
Sagiss has become a true extension of REI Energy's IT department. Their team comes in once a month to conduct an audit, bringing attention to maintenance issues that Traugott may be too busy to spot.
Sagiss will often highlight accounts that haven’t been logged into for a while so Traugott can decide if they need to be kept open or deleted. Based on his decisions, Sagiss will update the active directory to minimize open accounts, excess privileges, and security risks.
The biggest benefit for Traugott of working with Sagiss has been the peace of mind that comes with knowing someone has his back. Sagiss responds quickly whenever he needs help. The team will work after-hours as needed and keep him updated on their progress. He’s worked with several different people over the multiple years he’s been a customer and has experienced consistent, reliable service throughout.
"Before we had Sagiss and I had no backup, I was...constantly worried about...server crashes," Traugott reflected. "I'm pretty resourceful, and I've managed things over the years, but that worry was always there."
Now, while Traugott still has the primary IT responsibility, his burden is manageable. He has a team to support him and take over tedious tasks so he can focus on more strategic activities. He also has additional insight whenever he needs to draw on it.
Before he began partnering with Sagiss, Traugott was on his own with IT problems. If he didn't have the expertise, he had nowhere else to turn. Now, he has an entire team of experts he can call anytime to help him handle IT issues. If the first person he talks to can’t solve his problem, they escalate it to a higher level of support. He can always get an answer when he needs it.
As Traugott puts it, “They know enough about my network and the situations we're in that they could fix [any problem]. And it's a relatively minimal cost.”
Traugott has been happy with Sagiss since the beginning of their partnership in 2019, and his faith in their support has only grown over the years. Sagiss has done a great job in every respect, from disaster recovery tests to restoring entire SQL databases. Sagiss even helped Traugott move some crashed servers to virtual machines rather than adding another physical device. Over time, Traugott has downsized from 25 servers on four racks to a single rack with one server.
Thanks to REI Energy's partnership with Sagiss, the company now has access to customized, managed IT service that perfectly fits its needs.