reSources IT is a business unit of Publicis, the fourth largest advertising and communications group in the world. It provides IT services to 21 Publicis agencies in nine separate locations throughout the New York metro area. These include Saatchi & Saatchi New York, Saatchi Healthcare, Kaplan-Thaler, the fastest growing ad agency in the US, as well as several Publicis specialty and healthcare agencies.
Publicis has grown rapidly in the New York area through both business growth and the acquisition of new agencies. reSources IT’s job has been to assimilate the technologies of the acquisitions, and to support them all, quickly and effectively. reSources IT handles that workload — 700 Mac users in in the creative departments of 21 agencies — with an IT staff of just seven people — one supervisor, David Plavin, and six analysts. How do they do it? With an infrastructure powered by Xserves and Mac OS X Server, plus the magic of Remote Desktop 3.
“No wait” support.
Supporting all those creatives coming from different agencies with different technologies and different expectations could be a nightmare, but with Remote Desktop 3 it’s a snap, according to David Plavin. “We have a simple system. When users have a problem, they call or email the help desk. We write a ticket and answer them in order, usually instantaneously. With Remote Desktop 3, we can see exactly what the user is doing. We can walk them through the solution, or take control of their system and fix the problem. All remotely. They don’t have to sit around waiting for a tech to show up. And, obviously, we don’t have to employ an army of techs to drive all over town. Or sit in all 21 agencies. With Remote Desktop, it just doesn’t matter that the clients are here or across town. Whether we’re providing help or managing our assets, we can do it all right here from one desktop.”
In just 15 months, the number of Mac users we support has grown from 150 to almost 700, in multiple agencies at multiple locations. A nightmare? No, we’re able to support them all instantaneously. Remotely.
— David Plavin, Supervisor, reSources IT
Easier to use. Easier to create. Easier to support.
“Technically, we support users, but really, we’re supporting the creative process, and the Mac makes that easier. How? Because everything is easier on a Mac. Most of the users we support don’t have a lot of tech knowledge, but because the Mac is so intuitive, they get it. Moreover, all Mac apps basically work the same way, so once you learn one app, they’re all easier to use. That means they can concentrate their efforts on creative, not on the computer.”
Mac makes it easier to support the creative process, too. Plavin and his team use Remote Desktop 3 to distribute software and manage and administer all the systems under their control. “We have creatives using all the typical creative apps, from Final Cut Pro, Quark, Adobe Creative Suite, Acrobat, and Suitcase to Keynote, Pages, iLife, and Microsoft Office. With Remote desktop 3, we can see exactly what is installed on each desktop, not just which applications, but which versions, plug-ins, add-ons, which fonts, and so on. With that information we can automatically sort lists of who’s using what. And with FileWave, we can blast exactly the right updates out to each desktop or workgroup automatically. So after an update, the user can sit down and find everything they’re used to working with — Photoshop Plug-ins, fonts, whatever — right where they expect it to be. No hunting, no configuring, they can just get to work.”
“Also, we don’t have many cross platform issues. In some of our agencies, account people work on PCs, but most of the applications where account people and creative people intersect are compatible across Windows and Mac. When they aren’t, Acrobat is. And with the new Intel-powered Macs, you’ll be able to run Windows on a Mac. If you really have to.”
Powered by Xserve. And Mac mini.
Driving the reSource IT network are 10 Xserve G5 servers supported by Xserve RAID storage. reSource IT employs four Xserve servers to provide file sharing services, while another six handle application services. Image deployment is handled by NetBoot. And backup is by Veritas. Interestingly, Plavin has added Mac minis to his backroom. “The mini’s make great FTP servers. They’re plenty fast, and they’re very inexpensive. We’ve got seven of them working as FTP servers, font servers, and Quark license servers. And we’ll probably add more in the future.”
The bottom line.
“The fact is, it’s the Mac OS and Remote Desktop 3 that enable us to do what we do the way we do it. If we had to manage and support this many systems in this many locations any other way, the cost would be prohibitive and the productivity of the agencies would probably be a whole lot less.”
