Pure IT Helps Kids Cancer Care Save Thousands Every Year In IT Costs

Pure IT Helps Kids Cancer Care Save Thousands Every Year In IT Costs

Kids Cancer Care, a small Calgary charity, was started just over 26 years ago by founder and CEO Christine McIver in order to provide services for families dealing with pediatric cancer and fundraise for research. Two and half decades later, the charity now raises millions every year, running camps, providing education support and tutoring programs, outreach programs, and funding critical research into pediatric cancer.

As an active charity, Kids Cancer Care depends heavily on their IT. In order to maintain their operations and programming, process and track donations, and manage data security, they need a robust IT environment and a team to take care of it. Furthermore, all of this needs to be achieved within the boundaries of a strict budget.

That’s why Kids Cancer Care relies on Pure IT.

Download the complete story of success here.

Pure IT Provides Dedicated IT Support For Kids Cancer Care

“Coming to Kids Cancer Care, Pure IT had been in place for about ten years already, so it wasn’t something that I selected, rather, a team I inherited,” says Debra Osiowy, CFO, Kids Cancer Care.

As CFO, Debra Osiowy reports to the CEO, and is responsible for many aspects of Kids Cancer Care’s operations, including oversight of IT. Prior to working with Kids Cancer Care, Debra worked at a small university, where the IT environment for hundreds of users was handled by a small internal team. Coming to Kids Cancer Care, Debra was surprised by how consistent and direct the support from Pure IT was.

“They have this marvelous technician that they’ve assigned to us,” says Debra. “Moe is a great listener, a great communicator, and a very skilled IT tech. I am very grateful to them for giving us dedicated support with Moe.”

This is just one of the reasons why Debra appreciates Pure IT. Moe and the team are in touch on a regular basis, and not just when something goes wrong. Consistent communication helps Debra to plan ahead for IT strategies, priorities, and projects.

“We have one point of contact, and we have dedicated time with him every second Thursday morning,” says Deb. “It’s been remarkable what we’ve been able to accomplish over the past few years.”

Pure IT Helped Kids Cancer Care Minimize Expenses During The COVID-19 Pandemic

“I think they gave us a huge break in March and April,” says Debra. “We were transitioning our team to work-from-home, and we, as a small charity, were not well-positioned to make that happen.”

Near the start of 2020, Kids Cancer Care had decided to move all data and programs from on-site servers to a cloud-based Microsoft SharePoint environment. This would have been challenging enough on its own, but to add to the complexity, by the time Kids Cancer Care was ready to migrate, everyone was working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

IT resources have never been as important as they are now as a majority of professionals work from home. In order for organizations like Kids Cancer Care to stay connected and productive while working remotely, they need the right technologies and processes in place.

“There was no going back once we knew we needed everybody working from home,” says Debra. “We really leaned very heavily on Pure IT to make that happen with SharePoint, and I’m sure there was time we didn’t get billed for.”

Due to how quickly the pandemic developed, many organizations were unable to prepare for the shift to a remote work setting. Doing so would have required careful planning, methodical execution of new processes, and expert implementation of new technologies. Fortunately for Kids Cancer Care, they can rely on Pure IT for expert assistance.

“We leaned heavily on Moe and the team at Pure IT to get our employees operational on a dime,” says Debra. “It was a really challenging time, and I know they gave us a huge break.”

Moe and the Pure IT team ensured that everyone working remotely for Kids Cancer Care had what they needed to do so productively and securely. In some cases that meant securing personal home computers, and in others, Pure IT deployed new laptops for Kids Cancer Care’s staff. “As a small charity, without a dedicated IT team, we rely on Pure IT to help us do remarkable things,” says Debra. “I have to say they’ve been fantastic to us. I have to give credit where credit is due.”

Pure IT Seamlessly Migrated Kids Cancer Care To Microsoft SharePoint

“The server was at end of life, it was over four years old,” says Debra. “We made the bold decision not to bother upgrading that server, but just to go directly to the cloud.”

Even if it wasn’t during a global pandemic, migrating Kids Cancer Care to Microsoft SharePoint would have been a formidable project. Migration to the cloud impacts all users and can often be complicated and risky. An improperly managed migration can result in a range of negative consequences:

• During the transition, the business could permanently lose key data with no backup or redundancies to replace it.
• The migration, already expensive, could take longer than expected and add additional downtime to the staff’s work life.
• Once it is finally installed and launched, if the platform is overly complicated and difficult to learn, it could lead to more downtime for the staff.

“We were looking for a savings of investment and time, because we’re small, so if we could eliminate that interim step of upgrading the server, that’s just better for us,” says Debra. “SharePoint was a big change for our staff, but it was established in other workplaces, which gave us the courage to be able to move directly from the old server to SharePoint.”

Working with an advisory committee, Pure IT and Kids Cancer Care determined that SharePoint was the best option for them. It would allow them to eliminate on-site hardware, and gain the many advantages offered by the cloud. Once the project was completed, Pure IT made sure to configure the cloud environment specifically to Kids Cancer Care’s needs.

“Moe came in afterward and we were able to fine-tune it because he understood Kids Cancer Care better than the IT specialist who led the project,” says Debra. “It went well, and now I don’t think there’s anyone that would go back. The transition to SharePoint has been a gamechanger for our team, enabling us to collaborate and improve access for our employees at Camp Kindle!”

Pure IT Helps Kids Cancer Care Saves Thousands Of Dollars In Their IT Budget

In addition to providing convenient and secure remote access for the Kids Cancer Care staff during the pandemic, their new SharePoint environment also allowed them to eliminate unnecessary IT costs.

“We are saving significant money in our backup regimen,” says Debra. “We’re saving $12,000 or $13,000 a year because we’re no longer doing our on-premise backup with a backup appliance and subscription.”

By moving Kids Cancer Care to the cloud, Pure IT helped them to eliminate subscription costs for their data backup appliance, as well as make better use of the space they had previously needed to store it and their out-of-date server.

“It’s also allowed us to redeploy space in our server room because we no longer have the server and backup appliance there, so that allows us to save a little bit of money,” says Debra. “We still have a third-party backup supported by Pure IT, but it’s not nearly as expensive as an appliance on-premise.”