Andover, Mass., June 16, 2020 – Navisite announced today that following a fast deployment of its desktop as a service (DaaS) solution, AAA Western and Central New York (AAA WCNY) has successfully enabled hundreds of employees to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, while ensuring continued, uninterrupted service to its more than 880,000 members in Upstate New York.

The accelerated project took place in March in response to a work-from-home state mandate that forced the member services association to find a solution for its entire workforce within days. With the help of Navisite, AAA WCNY created a highly scalable virtual desktop environment and proven model that can scale to meet future demand.  

“Our coronavirus response planning began in early March and expanded quickly as work-at-home mandates swept the state,” said Peter Balisteri, vice president of information technology at AAA WCNY. “We had to quickly scale to support remote workers and challenged Navisite to meet an aggressive implementation timeline. Within a week, their team was deploying virtual desktops to our employees across 11 Travel and Insurance Centers and other facilities with minimal impact, which was crucial to our success.” 

As part of its DaaS solution, Navisite manages the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) for AAA WCNY in its hosted data center, including building out desktop images and supporting end users. Because the operating system and applications are in a private cloud, rather than on physical computers, AAA WCNY has much greater security management and control over its data and access to corporate resources.

“Navisite did an amazing job of pulling together the resources and expertise to get the solution up and running in days,” said Frank D’Arrigo, director of information technology at AAA WCNY. “We now have the ability to scale up or down as needed, which will be invaluable to us in the months ahead. As we think about what the ‘new normal’ will look like, we now have a model in place that shows how many of our essential roles can successfully operate remotely.”

Today, AAA WCNY supports over 200 of its employees—insurance agents, dispatchers, travel agents, administration and other staff—through Navisite’s DaaS solution. These are employees whose roles were traditionally conducted on-premises and were not previously equipped to operate remotely. The rest of the organization’s approximately 750 employees are supported through remote routers and virtual private networks (VPN). 

“AAA WCNY is a great example of an organization that did not hesitate to shift gears and do what was needed to support their employees and, ultimately, their members,” said Gina Murphy, COO of Navisite. “Cloud-based VDI, whether deployed via private or public cloud, can provide immediate benefits in terms of scale, security and flexibility that businesses need to address the new working reality. We’re pleased that AAA WCNY entrusted us to support them on this initiative, and we’ll continue to look at ways to help them navigate IT change.”

Additional resources: 
•    eBook: Four Facts You Need to Know About VDI
•    eBook: Cybersecurity and COVID-19: 5 Tips for Securing a Remote Workforce
•    Webinar: How to Enable a 'Work from Home' Workforce with Cloud-Based Virtual Desktops

About AAA Western and Central New York
As Upstate New York’s largest member services organization, AAA Western and Central New York provides more than 887,000 members with travel, insurance, financial and automotive related services. Since its founding in 1900, AAA has been a leading advocate for the safety and security of all travelers. Visit AAA at www.AAA.com or www.NewsRoom.AAA.com or download our mobile app at www.AAA.com/mobile.

About Navisite
Navisite is a modern managed cloud service provider that accelerates IT transformation for thousands of growing and established global brands. Through our deep technical knowledge and strategic relationships with the world’s leading cloud providers, proven delivery methodologies, platform-agnostic approach and worldwide network of highly specialized experts, we provide the capabilities and practical guidance customers need to successfully embrace IT change and move their businesses forward. Let us partner with you to navigate the now—learn more at navisite.com.

Contact:
Drew Miale
Three Rings Inc. 
dmiale@threeringsinc.com
M: 207-423-5033