AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together cloud infrastructure, intelligent operations, and modern applications, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation. AHEAD was founded in 2007 and in 2019 merged with Sovereign Systems, and Data Blue. The services formerly available under those brands is now available from AHEAD, LLC.
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AVI-SPL
Score 8.5 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
AVI-SPL is a digital workplace services provider that works with organizations globally to improve team collaboration through video and audio technology.
They are easily our go to company for anything revolving around VMware suite, whether that is infrastructure related, automation related, or monitoring related. It's a no brainier to get their assistance with a lot of tasks as they can competently implement complex designs. Also on the storage architecture side they are great. I'm sure there is much more but for my team we mainly leverage them in these areas.
They provide great service, installation and support. When I need help with anything, I can call them and have a discussion. If service or installation is needed, I can count on them to provide the highest quality technicians to get the jobs done correctly. Box sales are quick, easy and correct
The provided pre-req documentation was thorough and well thought out, making it easy to jump into the project.
The design session to gather our requirements was very helpful, Sovereign's familiarity with the vRealize product line along with diagramming our desired layout confirmed our decision to bring in assistance with the project.
When we ran into some issues with Sovereign's custom code their development team was on top of it and solved the issue in a matter of a few days.
The desk mics are a game changer. They can be moved closer to the presenter so that there is never a missed word!
The camera quality is great! It's important to us to look professional to others outside of the company and this technology helps with that.
The quick response time on technical issues. Yes, there is always a wait time to have a tech come out. But it also goes to show they stay busy because they are in high demand! Every tech from the installation to software issues that have came to the office are very informative about the software and incredibly nice, which is appreciated more than you know.
Coordination of product orders with the vendor although I think the vendor is the bigger issue. Insuring delivery time frames are met is of great importance with these kinds of projects.
Communication between scheduled project meetings. There could be more contact between meetings.
They are a great company to work with overall, but there is always room for improvement. We have had incredibly positive experiences with our main sales rep for any and all purchases. The installation team in southwest VA is lacking and lead to quite a lot of issues on a large scale project last year.
They had us replace the PC three times stating that the PSU was not strong enough to power the USB bus. The last PC had a 1500w PSU. The USB devices kept not working because they had too many USB devices connected. We had to hire another company to come out and fix this mistake as well. They redesigned the solution to get the features that we requested from the beginning and something that would work correctly
Yes, when we had support for one of our lecture halls for a few months, we maximized our use of the support help desk. They were always responsive and also willing to teach me their solutions as they fixed systems.
Having extensive pre-implementaton dialogue really made the process much smoother. We had most of our bases covered and were ready for the equipment installation/implementation, except for the previously mentioned network configuration issues that arose.
Given a caveat that this project had major changes to overcome, I would say AVI-SPL did about as well as any large installer out there could do under the circumstances.
We've gone through a few AV partners since developing our AV program. We started with a small local shop, but they didn't have the expertise as we scaled. We moved to a larger local shop, but they struggled to provide support and I don't believe their designs were optimal. Our third go-round with a national firm seemed fine at first, but eventually they too were unable to provide the level of support we needed. So far, AVI-SPL has been getting us taken care of.