The United States Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM) sought to simplify and enhance the operations and efficiency of their network infrastructure. EIC leads a team that is managing network and help desk operations for this organization. At contract onset, EIC mapped the business requirements of MARCORSYSCOM to its computing infrastructure. A number of improvement opportunities were discovered and acted upon. We assisted in migrating the entire SYSCOM environment from Banyan Vines Mail to MS Exchange. EIC consolidated seven file and print servers into three boxes. EIC designed and implemented a VLAN structure with ISL and fast etherchannel running between the switches. EIC also designed and implemented an entirely new enterprise wide backup solution. We installed SMS 2.0 and implemented Cisco Works and “Wandel & Golterman” analyzers to control the infrastructure and to monitor the traffic at the packet level. HP OpenView with Network Node Manager ties all of the components into a unified interface providing greatly enhanced monitoring and notification capabilities. Today, MARCORSYSCOM has over 700 users, 1200 nodes, and approximately 40 Dell servers that operate an efficient and well-managed network.

Due to our success on this contract, EIC has been awarded a similar support services contract for the U.S. Marine Corps Training and Education Command (TECOM). EIC is responsible for the administration and management of network services, web site development, and help desk support for TECOM. The organization has 3,500 users supported by a Fast Ethernet topology and an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) backbone in a campus environment. The command has five messaging servers running MS Exchange and providing mail connectivity to dissimilar messaging systems through a variety of mail connectors. EIC is responsible for network monitoring and performance optimization. EIC creates baseline benchmarks for comparison with current performance to identify potential problems and bottlenecks. EIC has completely documented the network and client/server environment and has made recommenda-tions to consolidate services, improve systems management, and reduce TCO.