The Power of Being There
®
Case Study
Alberta Newsprint turns centralized server
management into a success story
“Thanks to Avocent, we can now
remotely access our system from
anywhere, anytime, regardless
of whether our system is failing
at the moment. That’s a huge
benefit!”
Stephen Tapp
Systems Engineer
Alberta Newsprint Company
Alberta Newsprint Company is one of North America’s leading manufacturers of premium
quality newsprint. With over 200 employees located in offices ranging from the main office
in Whitecourt, Alberta, to a satellite office in Vancouver, B.C. and three additional offices in
the U.S., Alberta Newsprint serves a broad range of customers in Canada and the U.S.
Old technology is bad news
When you are responsible for ensuring there is a steady supply of newsprint for North
America’s news hungry consumers, it requires you to produce 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
That is why Alberta Newsprint maintains an around the clock production environment, and
why it is important to ensure that IT support is readily available. Because, if an IT problem
arises or a critical server goes down, the result could mean a serious interruption to
product supply – and a lot of unhappy customers.
Alberta Newsprint’s IT department consisted of three staff and 50 servers utilizing older
technology, which essentially created a number of redundant stations, multiple computers
and a cabling mess that would rival some of the densest jungles in South America. And
since some of the servers were maintained in remote locations, if there was a problem,
there was no fast, convenient solution. And production downtime would result.
According to Stephen Tapp, Systems Engineer, Alberta Newsprint Company, “We were using
older remote control software that relied on the system being up and running. So, if our
system had problems, we couldn’t utilize our remote control solution. And the longer the
system was down, the more problems we would have in recovery in terms of data loss and
other systems impacted. We needed a new digital solution. One that would not only provide
reliable remote access and the ability to share and collaborate on KVM sessions, but also
please the financial guardians in our accounting department.”
Avocent solution is good news.
Since Tapp had enjoyed previous success with older Avocent solutions, he was confident that
Avocent would have the digital solution they needed. "When we began looking at the market,
Avocent was the only KVM solution provider offering digital technology,” states Tapp.
