WatServ
Unleashing the Microsoft Solution Edge

“WatServ was born, like many things, out of necessity,” enunciates Greg Fischer, VP-Operations and CIO, WatServ. In 2006, Tom Doerner, WatServ’s President, was running Dynamics GP for his previous organization and wanted to curtail the overhead expenses. He approached Microsoft for a recommendation on companies specializing in hosted Microsoft Dynamics products only to find that none existed in the space. After reviewing the business case, Doerner decided to strike out on his own and found a business catering solely to Microsoft Dynamics customers seeking out competent hosted and managed services. “We grew on referrals, and very quickly established a reputation for in-depth knowledge of Dynamics and its add-ons, predictable per user based pricing, and outstanding support.” Since then the Southfield, MI-based WatServ has made a dynamic shift from deploying for small businesses to a focus on large, complex Dynamics deployments that require 24/7 global support.

Today, WatServ has embraced Azure as an adjunct to their Private Cloud offerings in addition to delivering comprehensive managed services in a secure and reliable environment. “We regularly hear questions from Microsoft Dynamics partners and customers about the Azure cloud—the differentiators to private cloud, cost advantages/ disadvantages, and, most importantly what the support and availability deliverables of Azure are,” informs Fischer. In a bid to address this scenario, the firm has over the last 24 months, developed a Rapid Azure Deployments (RAD) product that allows their partners to readily access a WatServ portal, and fully deploy multi-tenant or single-tenant Dynamics NAV or GP solutions for their customers on Azure. “We also offer a fully managed, discrete Dynamics NAV, GP, or AX offerings for customers that crave the private cloud customer service experience but would prefer to be on the Azure platform.”

With the announcement of Dynamics 365, WatServ is uniquely positioned to advise their partners and customers on the options available to them, while alerting them for relative merits or pitfalls associated with adopting the cloud-based solution. Constantly evaluating cloud, general enterprise IT trends, ERP marketplace trends, partner/VAR and customer requirements to understand the impact of their current offerings, WatServ endeavors to effectively complement the current trend—where vendors such as Microsoft are taking ERP to a public cloud—by guiding the customers to implement a thorough solution.

We are always looking at providing the best performance/availably/ cost offering for our customers

Having extensive experience that spans over two decades, WatServ engineers each customer environment individually for best in class performance, Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) (infrastructure, financial, and application) and proactive system monitoring. WatServ’s team of Dynamics technical support analysts with collectively over 50 years of experience, ensure that customers have direct access to their all-inclusive support team 24/7 without incurring additional fees or charges.

In one instance, Eagle’s Flight, a firm specializing in experiential learning programs for the business community, enlisted WatServ to migrate from on-premise to Microsoft Office 365. WatServ successfully migrated Eagle Flight’s email from on-premise hosted Exchange model to Microsoft Exchange Online. The on-time and on-budget migration improved collaboration, reduced hosting and maintenance costs while ensuring zero downtime thereby enabling Eagle Flight’s workforce of trainers to remain productive.

“We are always looking at providing the best performance/availability/cost offering for our customers,” says Fischer. In the Dynamics space, the company was first to market 10Gbe connectivity, flash accelerated storage, and more. “While many of our competitors focus on ‘technical ownership’ of the customer relationship, our relentless desire is to ‘out-technology’ them as we rigorously test progressive technologies to enhance the customer experience,” he concludes.