August 20, 2010
So far August has been very good to us. The picture to the left was a great long weekend in Seaside, along with my nephew Anthony and niece Arianna, yes we did see Snooki. I just can’t believe summer is almost over. We still have a few nice weather weekends to go and that should carry into September! AMRCON had a sponsorship at the Matawan Idol night, it was a lot of fun and was
amazing to see the amount of people that came out to support it. They had some great talent. We look forward to being a part of it again next year. Thanks to all the visitors that stopped by our table and remember to come and visit AMRCON the first Friday of any month from 8:30 – 10:30am for our Open House Free Breakfast Tour.
The Rudko’s have a few more trips up our sleeves. We’ll be in Lake George this week and in Connecticut in September. My sister Motria is ge
tting married and everyone will be there, here is a picture of Deeko already pulling his tuxedo out of the closet. Yes, he does a lot of black tie events throughout the year so he has his own tux. I guess they really due emulate their father, I just didn’t think it would be this soon! My cloning project is working perfectly. We all hope Motria & Robert have a terrific day. It will be a great time, looking to report on it next month.
We had a great time with my BNI networking group “Sweet Success” at the Blue Claws game. I don’t think Santino will be much of an athlete. He spent much of his time more interested in the bounce house and 
walking around. Deeko on the other hand has quite an arm and watched most of the game, waiting for a ball to come his way. Although I’m glad that the close ones we had were just out of reach since he didn’t have a glove! They have quite a stadium if you ever have the chance to go to a game. Plenty to do, even if you can’t sit still for the game. Here’s a shot of Santino and myself over in the outfield. Yes, it was just to the left of the bounce house, it’s the only way we got him to walk around for the shot.
I’m looking forward to spending some final days on vacation with the kids. It’s all business for me until the end of the year. Well maybe not completely, but for the most part. We have quite a few projects to finish up and I always start thinking about end of year once the 3rd quarter ends. My wife Sunny laughs because she says I managed the family on the fiscal year. I guess I do, but what other way is there? Suggestions?
April 15, 2010
Over the weekend the remaining Network Operations Center “NOC” was moved from the first floor of the 92 Broad street address. We are now fully operational at 1070 State Route 34 in Matawan NJ. The remaining aspects went very well with no surprises. We like well thought out plans and careful thought. We did the same for ourselves as the many clients we complete similar moves and build-outs for each year. Come over and take a peek.
Half of the NOC desks were already in place but y0u can see here, this Wright Line technical furniture was one of the pieces that needed to be moved. This is a seat pod for 4 technicians, and another 2 on the other side of the room. We have the capacity to fit a total of 10 technicians in our current configuration. We’re ready for the growth. Our current business model also consists of remote and off-site technicians and engineers, limiting the need for a loaded office. This model helps us respond quickly in the field. As you may know 96% of all of AMRCON NOC/Help Desk trouble tickets are closed remotely, meaning without dispatching a technician on-site. This drastically improves the speed in which you receive support and virtually eliminates downtime. When we do need to dispatch on-site, we have someone close by to provide the service or we can dispatch from our NJ HQ. As you can image, the more we can do remotely, you benefit. Since we can speed up the response and resolution times without the need to wait for someone to show up on-site, we also reduce our overhead costs. When our costs can be reduced, these savings are passed to our clients. This is one of the many reasons why AMRCON’s Managed Service called ODS or On Demand Support, is so popular. We can reduce your budget and provide better support. It’s a win-win no matter how you look at it. The next benefit is flat rate IT. AMRCON’s ODS services are provided at a flat monthly subscription rate, so we’re ensuring everything is working efficiently, but just in case something goes bump in the night, you have no additional cost. It’s the best of both worlds, more efficient than hiring your own staff and certainly more cost effective.
Did you know that as CEO I’ve at one point or another worked each and every position at AMRCON? So even when it comes to being able to complete the task of re-cabling, installing, and configuring as simple or as complex a project as our NOC, I’m in there getting my hands dirty and keeping up with my engineering know how. As CEO of AMRCON I thinks its important to know as much as I can about each job, I believe it to provide and edge in leadership, management, and training. These elements are just a few I take very seriously, but at the same time I can’t lie, it’s fun. I love what I do, being involved is just another perk. My clients are generally surprised that I still enjoy doing my own business development, but I just can’t see myself entrusting it to anyone else. Building relationships with our clients is the first step, but it’s my past and present engineering experience that keeps me with an edge in the conference room. I can sell the company but also answer the technical questions. Doesn’t everyone do that? More an more I’ve been told it was the reason why some chose AMRCON, I’m going to keep it that way.
Neatness always counts. So I explained quite a bit in this blog. You probably noticed the pitch in the beginning on our NOC and what separates us. Then I spoke about business development and some of our processes. I smothered it with the status of our move but when it comes down to it we also deliver. Here are a few shots of the beginnings of our new data center. We practice what we preach. We color code and keep things neat everywhere. IT is a very precise field, the way it looks should be as well for many reasons. First you can create a difficult time for troubleshooting, safety concerns and even misconfiguration when things are not in order. Now imagine you have everything right but you have to come back 2 years later to troubleshoot. If you’re not neat and organized, how do you think that would turn out?
Many of us are still trying to catch up from the 36 hour straight work weekend, not to mention 16 hours days thereafter. So I hope everyone can follow my random thoughts. I can assure you however that the new office is ready to go and in fact has been fully operational this entire week. Feel free to stop by and check us out. We’re not to faraway from the rest of our furniture delivery and remaining technical enhancements, but I’ll chat about those later. For now thank you for listening. Dee Rudko – CEO
March 26, 2010
Those of you that have visited the old AMRCON office know that a part of the complexity that we’ve been battling through was the fact that our support and administrative floors were completely separated from floor to floor. The upstairs administrative office has been completely vacated from 92D Broad Street and as of today I am proud to say is up and running at the new location at 1070 State Route 34 in Matawan. The new floor plan will have everyone on the same floor. Although not everyone will fully enjoy having me walk the support floor more often, logistically our office will run that much more efficiently having everyone an arms reach to provide the support to our clients.
Although were not in our permanent seat locations, I am living it up a bit with 20 feet of windows working temporarily in the conference room. The new office has a total of 70 feet of solid windows. A different feel completely from the old office and will benefit my entire staff. Sounds funny right? How will we benefit? Studies show that employees (me included) are in better spirits with more sunlight, thus why some people get into a slump in the winter months because of the shorter days. Now don’t get me wrong traffic watching does no one any good, but I’m very excited to be able to provide such a nice office with many amenities to my hard working staff.
Brenda, Alexis and myself are the only staff that will be working out of the new site until the downstairs support office at 92 Broad street is moved next month. This way our administrative work load will not be disrupted with the remaining build-out tasks that keep us going back and forth to the new office. If you visit us you will find the three of us in the front of the office ready to greet our visitors, vendors and clients.
This was just a quick post to keep everyone up to date. More news to come during the week. I welcome all to stop by and say hello. I’d be more than happy to give a tour and answer any questions. It’s all coming along and working according to plan. A great site to visit for anyone to check out an office move, or new build-out for a new space. Dee Rudko – CEO
March 1, 2010
AMRCON has been bursting at the seams for some time now in our current location at 92 Broad Street in Keyport, NJ. We’ve spent the past 18 months looking for a larger office space, but have just not been able to find a good fit. As you can imagine, it took quite a bit of careful thought to insure a move is right, not only for AMRCON, but also for our clients.
I am happy to tell you that we’ve finally found the perfect spot where AMRCON can continue to grow and serve our clients best. As of May 1, we’ll be moving to our new location at 1070 State Route 34, in Matawan, NJ.
Why are we moving?
When AMRCON opened for business in 2005, we chose the retail store front location on Broad Street in Keyport to provide easy access for our business clients and residential walk-in clients. As AMRCON’s managed services clients grew, we were able to leverage the space just above the retail storefront to expand the business. It allowed us just enough space to triple the amount of employees and double our space over the past two years. Today AMRCON has hundreds of clients all over the tri-state area, so location is a perk only if it serves our clients well. Although the Keyport area has been very good to us, it simply does not have the right location to allow us to grow. I personally love Keyport and proudly live only a few hundred feet away from our office. However, with the high profile clients on our roster, steady growth of our business and the need for more room, we decided to move to a more suitable office just in neighboring Matawan.
What does this mean to you and should you be concerned?
At AMRCON, we have helped dozens of businesses, large and small, move from one location to another. Given that experience, we are confident that we have the talent and project management skills to deploy our new location with minimal, if any, affect to our valued clients. The move will carefully be staged in the best interest of not only our business clients but also our residential following.
Phase 1 of our move, the construction of our new office suite and the vital communications configuration that is critical to our client support, is already underway and expected to be complete by March 30th. All infrastructure, such as supplemental cooling, our network operations room, security, alarms, communications and electrical aspects will be operational the moment we move.
On April 1, we will begin Phase 2, when we move non-critical aspects of our offices such as inventory, administrative services, and smaller items that can be moved. One weekend in April, still to be determined, all furnishings will be installed or moved from our current site. Our staff and equipment will still be operating at 92 Broad St., where we will continue to provide the same quality support services to our walk-in clients until April 30th. AMRCON will be 100% moved to our new location on May 1, and in place for business.
During this entire process we have made every effort to minimize the potential risk of outages. In fact, we only expect a small outage during the late evening on a weekend during our normal service window of maintenance. Parallel platforms will be set in place for fast turnover with virtually no downtime. Our walk-in clients can visit our new site as early as April 2nd.
If you have questions or concerns about our move, please feel free to call our offices. I’ll be more than happy to respond. – 732-705-5057
What are the benefits? (Larger, Parking, Conference Center, Tech Area)
Our new office is much larger and provides the ability to expand in ways that we could only hope for in our old location. For instance, our tech troubleshooting room will be completely isolated from the Network Operation Center “NOC.” Providing dedicated space to both entities provides more space for more business, and enables more AMRCON employees to handle walk-in clients or support calls coming into the NOC. Our new suite will have greater security, with card level access dependant on security clearance. Video surveillance, call recording and compliance will be key aspects of continued concern. We will also benefit from a 4-hour battery run time, and a backup generator, at a location that has rarely had more than 5 minutes of downtime over the past 4 years.
Clients will have better access to the highways for on-site meetings, as well as easy access to the rail system. The parking is more than sufficient, and our new office provides a very comfortable ambiance through our atrium and into our office suite. Our employees will have a more comfortable work environment to provide higher quality support.
Just as we were excited to open our doors five years ago in Keyport, we are equally thrilled to be moving to this new location. We hope you all come to visit.
In the end what will it accomplish?
We have found our new home at 1070 State Route 34, in Matawan. Our new, larger space will allow us to concentrate on continuing to grow and improve our products and services. Our business clients will notice a tremendous improvement in resources and capabilities, and we expect our walk-in business to triple in the next year. We plan to continue to earn the loyalty of our existing and future clients.
This is all possible because of you, our valued clients. Thank you!
Stay tuned, more news about our move to come.
Dee Rudko, CEO AMRCON
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