From Break-Fix Chaos to Proactive Managed Services: A 150-Endpoint Turnaround
72%
Ticket Volume Reduction
150
Endpoints Under Management
99.8%
Uptime After 90 Days
$340K
Annual IT Cost Savings
The Challenge
A mid-market professional services firm of 120 employees was drowning in reactive IT. Their single in-house IT administrator was overwhelmed, spending 90% of their time on break-fix issues. The environment had no centralized monitoring, no patch management schedule, outdated antivirus, and backups that hadn't been verified in over a year.
The tipping point came when a ransomware incident encrypted 3 shared drives and took the company offline for 48 hours. Recovery was partial at best—backups were corrupted. Leadership recognized they needed a fundamental shift in how IT was managed.
The Clear Moon Solution
We deployed a comprehensive managed services engagement in three phases across 90 days:
Phase 1 — Triage & Stabilize (Days 1-14)
Deployed RMM agents to all 150 endpoints. Performed a full network discovery and asset audit. Implemented emergency patching for 340+ critical vulnerabilities. Installed enterprise EDR across all systems.
Phase 2 — Automate & Monitor (Days 15-45)
Configured automated patch management with staged rollouts. Set up centralized SIEM with 24/7 SOC monitoring. Deployed Veeam BDR with nightly offsite replication and monthly restore testing. Implemented MFA on all accounts and conditional access policies.
Phase 3 — Optimize & Transition (Days 46-90)
Migrated the remaining on-prem Exchange server to Microsoft 365. Restructured Active Directory with proper OU hierarchy and GPOs. Trained the in-house admin as Tier 1 escalation point. Documented all procedures in a living IT runbook. Established SLA-backed helpdesk for all 120 employees.
The Outcome
Within 90 days, the environment was transformed from reactive chaos to a proactive, monitored, and automated managed services model:
- Monthly reactive tickets dropped from 180 to 50 — a 72% reduction
- Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) went from 6.5 hours to 45 minutes
- Verified backup restores now run monthly with automated testing
- Total IT spend (including Clear Moon contract) decreased by $340K annually vs. the old break-fix + downtime costs
- Employee satisfaction surveys showed IT from 2.1 → 4.6 / 5 within one quarter