“Remote Desktop Manager provides a quick and easy solution for us and is a real life saver. Now we have all of our information combined into one package, and in one place. We’re saving a lot of time each day, and there is definitely a cost-saving component as well. I’m very happy we are using Remote Desktop Manager; it really makes my job much easier and more enjoyable.”
– Justin Azevedo, Manager, Data Services, GolfNow
Client Snapshot
Part of the NBC Sports Group, Golf Channel connects the world to golf through a wide array of digital and lifestyle offerings that cover nearly 383 million touch points across various platforms. Golf Channel’s platforms include: Golf Channel Network (available to over 80 million pay television households in the U.S.), GolfNow, GolfChannel.com, Golf Live Extra, NBC Sports Live Extra, Golf Channel Mobile, GolfAdvisor.com, Golf Channel Academy, and Golf Channel Amateur Tour. Golf Channel and GolfNow employ approximately 3,000 people, including 115 IT staff who collectively manage thousands of servers across the organization.
Golf Channel’s Challenges
In order to support Golf Channel’s continued growth across its wide range of broadcast, digital and media properties, the company’s IT leadership team recognized that it had to overcome key asset management challenges, including:
- Server, connection and credential information that was inefficiently stored in various sources (Confluence, Secret Server, Excel), and was regularly out-of-date.
- Difficulty keeping information associated with different servers together and updated.
- Difficulty connecting to Confluence, which was needed to access server information.
- Time-consuming manual updating of credential information when passwords needed to be changed.
Golf Channel’s Solution: Remote Desktop Manager
Golf Channel discovered Remote Desktop Manager, and, after a trial period, concluded that RDM could solve the company’s existing challenges and support future scalability and growth.
Thanks to Remote Desktop Manager, Golf Channel’s IT team can now:
- Efficiently keep all server, connection, and credential informationin one place and constantly up-to-date.
- Respond quickly and effectively to urgent situations and emergencies.
- Effectively manage their growing inventory of machines.
- Rapidly and securely access the credential information they need simply by double-clicking on RDM and launching their data source (SQL Server Management Studio).
- Safely store sensitive information encrypted in notes – such as schemes and other confidential information – so they can be accessed on-demand.
- Add and connect to VPNs with a specific connection.
- Store attachments within RDM to ensure that security requirements associated with a specific machine are always kept together and organized.
- Save a significant amount of time when changing passwords; instead of manual updates, which take several hours, they now modify a single credential entry and associate it with multiple machines.
Here’s what Justin Azevedo, GolfNow’s Manager of Data Services, says about his team’s Remote Desktop Manager experience:
“We had reached a point where we were managing thousands of servers across the organization, and it was just too large of an environment to properly manage without some assistance. I personally couldn’t do my job without Remote Desktop Manager. The ability to move from machine to machine very quickly, and respond to the needs of the business throughout the day, just can’t be matched by any manual method of recordkeeping of server inventory. I am routinely going into 20 to 30 machines per day at a minimum. If I had to stop and look up the server address, my credential information, my VPN information, open the VPN, open the machine, and type in my credentials, I wouldn’t be able to function or produce the level of work I am today.”