With the market for condominiums booming in downtown Seattle in
2006 and 2007, MFC was actively engaged in the Cristalla and Hotel
1000 projects. When those were completed, the core staff rented
offices on First Street for a new MFC-Seattle office. The
staff of approximately ten people managed new projects in the Phinney Ridge,
Capitol Hill, and Greenwood neighborhoods of Seattle.
We created a new, self-contained
Active Directory domain for the MFCSeattle office. It consisted
of a web server
hosting Prolog, the construction project control application
from
Meridian Systems that was used by
the project managers, FTP, Exchange 2003, and a file server with
Terminal Services. All construction
managers at remote sights used terminal Server RDP sessions
over a Fortinet
firewall/VPN and
Outlook Web Access (OWA) or Outlook through their Terminal
Server session.
The decision to create a separate domain outside of Bellevue was
proved prophetic as the office was closed in late 2008 due to the
sharp downturn in the Seattle condo market.
Back in Bellevue, the team deployed Terminal Server and HP
T5300 thin client, solid-state devices that I purchased from
Computer Stop. This saved about $24,000 in workstation
replacements and made management a lot easier with one server to
manage rather that 22 workstations and users.
Virtualization began in earnest on a Dell PowerEdge 2900
running Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Virtual Server
2005 R2. The "easy" servers were converted first (a second Domain Controller, Print Server, Web Server).
That move resulted in the scrapping of all of the IBM Netfinity 5000 Pentium II servers.
I continued refining IT policy and procedures with the
help of department managers and incorporated everything in an "IT Information Technology
Guidebook".
Adding some automation and management to the mix included deploying
Spiceworks
for device monitoring and its included Helpdesk application.
Wrapping all of these efforts into an Intranet site created a single
reference for users. At the time, I used FrontPage 2003 to develop
the site. The "bullITin" web site
incorporated "Knowledge Base", "How To", "Guidelines",
"Frequently Asked Questions" and "What's New" sections.
Managing Executive workstations and laptops at their residences as
well as all remote desktops in the field offices required a remote
control solution. We chose
LogMeIn because it
offered a number of options to choose from when deploying the client
on the workstations. Once the software is installed on the device,
it checks in with the central LogMeIn servers which broker a
connection to the device over port 80 and thereby eliminating any
blocking issues with firewalls.
The department also hosted a series of monthly, "Brownbag" lunches.
This allowed for a relaxed, discussion of topics brought up by the
participants. It was well-received and also
included participation by Executive management and IT managers from
subsidiary/related organizations. In addition to IT Q&A, we also
discussed corporate matters as well as any personal computing
questions that were raised. All this for the price of a
catered sandwich.
The last piece of infrastructure work completed in 2008 was the
replacement of Uninterruptable Power Supplies from
American
Power Conversion and a temperature monitoring and
alert system for the server room.
With new home construction down in 2008, things turned for the worse for
Murray Franklyn beginning in the first quarter and leading up to
a near total
collapse in the 3rd quarter of 2008. Every few months brought a new
round of layoffs. We closed the MFCSeattle office in March. I
believe Hazel left in December, 2007 and Marcos in October,
2008. We were officially in survival mode - consolidating by
shedding people.
The IT department still completed
some strategic initiatives. The most significant implementation
was Omni. This was a .Net application developed by
Thomas
Consulting LLC , that used our
FAST Builder
Management System as it's core
database resource and OnBase Document Management for document retrieval. The modular
nature of this application integrated all line of business
departments, such as Plans/Permitting, Owner Color Selections
and Customer Service into one very cool web application. The
sincerest form of flattery came with the implementation of IT
guidebooks by our affiliated organizations, Talking Rain and
Hotel1000. Their publications were modeled after the MFC IT Guidebook.
Mike and I were the only staff at the beginning of
2009. We joked about whether the last person in IT would be the
"winner" or "loser" I left in February, 2009. Mike bid me
farewell. To my knowledge, he left in early 2010 and MFC was officially "outsourced"
to
Axonus Technology Group.