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Voice-and-Data corporation Meaning So Much to So Many Small Businesses— with Symantec’s Help

John Koval is a one-person company named Voice-and-Data that keeps data backed up and networks secure for about 25 small companies in his North Carolina region. These businesses depend on Koval—but how can a one-person shop keep so many customers up and running? Koval has built up his customers’ confidence by specializing in Symantec products. Symantec’s single-console approach helps him manage multiple systems efficiently, and automatic email reports keep him informed of security issues he can’t check up on in person. And new products created specifically for small business make life much simpler for both Koval and his customers.

Ignorance is bliss

Ask one of Voice-and-Data Corporation’s customers how they feel about Symantec products and you might get a blank stare. “These are companies with 1 to 49 employees, and they don’t have an IT person,” explains John Koval, Voice-and-Data president. “So if you said, ‘How is Symantec Endpoint Protection working out for you?’ my customers would say, ‘Huh?’ But ask if they are happy they haven’t gotten any viruses, and they’ll say yes.”

That’s the whole point. Koval, who retired as a full Colonel after 30 years in the Air Force decided on a “second career” in computers and worked briefly for a small Internet Service Provider before starting Voice-and-Data Corporation in 2000. Since then, he’s built a small but intensely loyal group of about 25 customers, most very small companies that depend on his judgment to fill their technology needs.

“I’m really offering trust,” he says. “For the most part, my customers do not understand what they need. But they trust me to recommend products that are cost effective.” Most of all, Koval’s custom-ers trust him to keep their networks protected and their data safe. “They rely on me to take care of their data, and thus, their businesses,” he says.

Koval takes this responsibility very seriously, and focusing on Symantec solutions is a big help. “When you’re a one-person company, you don’t have time to learn a broad spectrum of products,” he says. “So specializing on one vendor has helped me, but I also had to make sure it was good for the customers. That’s why I’ve stuck with Symantec—because I really know these are the best-of-breed products.”

Partner PrOFILe

Website: www.voice-and-data.com

Geographic area Served: Hickory, North Carolina area

Headquarters: Hickory, North Carolina

company Size Served: 1-49 employees

Specialization: Small and Medium Business

Status: Registered Partner

Symantec Solution Focus: Endpoint Security, Data Protection, Messaging Security

Partner SucceSS VOIce-anD-Data cOrPOratIOn

Impressive security

All of Voice-and-Data’s clients use either Symantec™ Endpoint Protection or most re-cently Symantec™ Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition. “There have been a couple of times I looked at alternatives,” Koval says. “I had one customer who came in with a McAfee product on the server, but I didn’t like it. I thought the console for Symantec was a very nice piece of software, where you could see the status of all the virus definitions, and all the scans, in one place. That’s one reason I have always stuck with the Symantec line.” In all that time, he says, “There have been only very rare cases when a single desktop or laptop was infected with malware, no in-stances of malware on servers, and no mal-ware-related disruptions at any of my clients.”

Symantec endpoint Protection Small Business edition hits a sweet spot

Symantec’s recent focus on creating software geared to small business has been a further boon to both Koval and his customers. “When Symantec developed Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition, I was part of the early adopter program,” he says. “Based on that experience, I had enough confidence to put it in production on a server at a truck-ing company with about 20 desktops.”

Koval was immediately impressed. “I like the standard edition of Symantec Endpoint Protection, but it has features for larger en-terprises, such as support for large data-bases and a more-complicated console. That would be great if I were working with 5,000 desktops—I’d need a full SQL database—but I’ve only got 20.The simplified console also made a big difference to me.”

He particularly appreciates how Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition seems truly designed for smaller businesses, not merely adapted from the enterprise-class version. “Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition gives me confidence I’m providing my customers a product that was designed from the ground up to perform in a small business environment,” he says. He now has seven or eight customers using the Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition.

email reports: the next best thing to being there

Since a one-man company can’t visit several clients at once, Symantec Endpoint Protection helps Koval and his clients by issuing weekly email reports at each com-pany where it is installed. “The reports show everything I need,” he says. “They show what desktops and laptops are online and offline, and which are behind on virus definitions. If there is a problem, I can deal with it immediately.”

Another product family that keeps clients happy and Koval’s workload reasonable is Symantec™ Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange, Symantec™ Mail Security for SMTP, and Symantec™ Premium AntiSpam. All these solutions are powered by Symantec Brightmail™ Message Filter technology which catches more than 99 percent of spam with less than one false positive per million. “You install it, you walk away from it, and you won’t ever see any spam again,” Koval says.

VOIce-anD-Data cOrPOratIOn SOLutIOn SuMMarY

Key Industries

• Construction

• Financial

• Insurance

• Real Estate

• Manufacturing

• Services

• Transport

• Medical/Dental

Services Provided

• IT Consulting

• IT Implementation

Symantec Products Offered

• Symantec Backup Exec™ for Windows Servers

• Symantec Backup Exec™ for Windows Small Business Server

• Symantec Ghost™ Solution Suite

• Symantec™ Endpoint Protection

• Symantec™ Endpoint Protection Small Busi-ness Edition

• Symantec™ Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange

• Symantec™ Mail Security for SMTP

• Symantec™ Premium AntiSpam

• Symantec™ Protection Suite Small Business Edition

customer Successes

CBSA Architects

For more information on Voice-And-Data Corporation and its customer account CBSA Architects, please go to www.symantec.com/customersuccess.

“If you said, ‘How is Symantec

Endpoint Protection working out for

you?’ my customers would say, ‘Huh?’

But ask if they are happy they haven’t

gotten any viruses, and they’ll say yes.”

John Koval

President

Voice-and-Data Corporation

In his early days working with these products, customers were sometimes reluctant to have spam automatically deleted without some prior review, so Koval would route the spam to an administrator’s inbox. “It didn’t take long to figure out that the stuff in the mailbox was clearly spam,” he says. “So now I don’t even ask. I just go ahead and have the spam deleted, and only route the suspected spam to the administrator. And there isn’t very much of that.”

So far, he adds, there seem to have been no false positives. “In the five or six years I’ve worked with antispam solutions from Symantec, I’ve never had anyone complain that a contact sent email that never arrived. It’s been wonderful.”

Most of Voice-and-Data’s smaller customers use Symantec Endpoint Protection or Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition, Koval reports. But five or six larger customers have Symantec Endpoint Protection and Symantec Mail Security with Premium AntiSpam. For those customers, he is plan-ning to bundle security products under Symantec Protection Suite Small Business Edition. He’s particularly pleased that this solution includes an antispam component.

How much backup is enough?

Besides depending on Voice-and-Data for security, customers also count on the com-pany for data protection. “I’ve been using Symantec Backup Exec since 1998,” Koval says. But lately he’s begun thinking that im-age-based desktop and server protection might be needed as well, and so he’s added Symantec Backup Exec™ System Recovery. “If it’s a case of ‘Oh, I just deleted a file and I need to get it back,’ it’s fairly easy to restore it from tape or local disk,” he says. “And then it happens again the following month, and you restore again. And the customer thinks, ‘This is just wonderful, we have the greatest backup.’”

But Koval worries about potential damage to his customers’ businesses—and his—if a more serious event takes one of their systems down altogether. “I said to a professional services customer, ‘You realize that we’re do-ing all these backups, but if a server were to break, it would take some time to get a new one. And then we’d have to rebuild it. You could be down for a week.’ And he said, ‘Well no, I didn’t realize that.’”

In the near future, Koval is hoping to offer some more robust data protection options, perhaps including offsite disaster recovery. As a first step, Backup Exec System Recovery would allow him to restore an entire server from an image in minutes, even onto dissimilar or virtual hardware.

To test out the product, he has taken advan-tage of a not for resale (NFR) license offered to Symantec Partners, and loaded Backup Exec System Recovery onto one of his own servers so he could study it. “I really like that I can get the full product, put it on a real server, and gain confidence with it before taking it to a customer,” he says.

That helps with his sales pitch too, he notes. “I can tell them, ‘I know this works because I’m using it myself,’” he says. “And they think, ‘If it’s good enough for him, it must be good enough for us, because we know he can get the best.’”

Koval has also used Symantec Ghost™ Solution Suite to save and quickly restore images of desktops and laptops. Both Backup Exec System Recovery and Symantec Ghost Solution Suite help him make the most pro-ductive use of his time, essential for a one-person shop.

a new focus on small business

Koval maintains a tight focus on serving his customers, and he’s thrilled that Symantec has so many new offerings specifically geared to small businesses. “I’m excited about what I see as Symantec’s enthusiasm for small business solutions,” he says. “It was really a dilemma for me to tell my customers ‘This is the best, but it’s a pain to install and it has all these features we don’t need, because it was intended for a larger organization.’ So I love Symantec’s new attention to small busi-ness solutions. That’s a great thing for com-panies like my customers—and for me.”

Copyright © 2009 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec logo, Backup Exec, Brightmail, and Ghost are all trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affili-ates in the United States and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Part number 20450022

“When you’re a one-person company,

you don’t have time to learn a broad

spectrum of products. So specializing

on one vendor has helped me, but I

also had to make sure it was good for

the customers. That’s why I’ve stuck

with Symantec—because I really know

these are the best-of-breed products.”

John Koval

President

Voice-and-Data Corporation

Partner SucceSS VOIce-anD-Data cOrPOratIOn