Please review our selection of case studies and how we applied specific technologies to resolve real business issues.
CHALLENGES
The client was having difficulty administering and maintaining disparate servers, networks and HMIs throughout the plant. Production cells utilized a broad range of operating systems and communication protocols, with little to no redundancy, resiliency or standardization. The combination of these factors resulted in production outages while creating significant challenges for consistent supportability.
SOLUTION
We designed and implemented a Plant Virtualization & Industrial Data Center solution that unified the disparate point-solutions by standardizing, consolidating, and relocating servers into a secure, redundant, controlled environment. HMI’s, servers and applications were fully virtualized.
BENEFITS
By introducing a standardized, highly scalable, fault-tolerant architecture, this solution yielded significant positive impacts to production, profitability, and supportability. Operational support was greatly improved, single points of failure were removed, and new applications and updates are now deployed in minutes. Recovery from failure reduced from hours and days to seconds and minutes.
CHALLENGES
Older, traditional PC-based HMI failures caused significant downtime due to recovery from hardware- and software-related issues.
SOLUTION
We designed and implemented a focused HMI Virtualization solution where we de-coupled the HMI hardware from the application and redirected the processing to the facility’s secure, fully redundant data center.
BENEFITS
By introducing a standardized, secure and controlled, fault-tolerant architecture for HMI Operations, production outages related to hardware and software have been greatly reduced. And, in the rare event of a failure or human error, recovery is quick and reliable, measured in seconds or minutes. Hardware and software costs have been reduced. Significant, positive impacts to production and profitability have been realized by leveraging thin clients on the plant floor with a centralized, secure and controlled, bullet-proof computing and storage architecture.
CHALLENGES
The client, a large holding company with multiple subsidiaries located in various geographies, was struggling to support a data center comprised of multiple, disparate solutions. Across the board, the solutions were exceedingly costly to maintain and manage, provided no on-demand scalability capacity and did not allow cross-subsidiary communications of any sort. Strict industry regulations provided specific parameters, requirements and restrictions directing solution architecture, performance, reliability and security.
SOLUTION
We designed and implemented a robust Unified Virtualized Data Center with Multi-Tenancy which was comprised of a unified fabric that seamlessly integrated Cisco, VMware and NetApp components.
BENEFITS
The Client experienced immediate Data Center cost savings of more than 30%, while improving overall infrastructure performance, manageability, recoverability, security, communications and scalability.
CHALLENGES
The client had grown their Disaster Recovery (DR) solution over time. The solution was comprised of disparate technologies which were proving to be too resource intensive to manage / administer, and backup windows were causing problems in operational performance. Additionally, the solution’s physical footprint was large and the related maintenance contracts were becoming cost prohibitive.
SOLUTION
The client had grown their Disaster Recovery (DR) solution over time. The solution was comprised of disparate technologies which were proving to be too resource intensive to manage / administer, and backup windows were causing problems in operational performance. Additionally, the solution’s physical footprint was large and the related maintenance contracts were becoming cost prohibitive.
BENEFITS
The backup time was reduced from 2 hours to 5 minutes. The physical footprint has been reduced by 80%. The cost of related maintenance contracts was reduced by 90%.
CHALLENGES
Our client needed to convert from a serial communications infrastructure to a high-speed Ethernet solution in order to provide services that would enhance the experience of their guests. As gaming contributes the most significant portion of their revenues, the resulting infrastructure needed to be highly fault-tolerant, scalable, and secure. Looking to the future, our client also desired an infrastructure that would serve as the foundation for a Unified Communications strategy and scale easily for future growth.
SOLUTION
We designed and implemented a new fiber-optic cable infrastructure and a robust Unified Network with redundant uplinks, enterprise-class switches and highly available firewalls. Throughout the effort we worked hand-in-hand with multiple business units and the customer’s gaming systems providers to ensure minimal impact to gaming operations.
BENEFITS
The solution provided a robust communications architecture to support current requirements and future growth. The new architecture provides a single unified platform for the entire organization which is extremely fault-tolerant, has zero single points of failure, is secure from internal and external threats and can be quickly scaled and adapted for new business opportunities and marketing campaigns. Within the unified architecture, the key business units (including gaming and back-of-house operations) have highly segmented and secure sub-networks. A significant portion of the solution was funded by additional revenues gained by significantly enhancing the overall guest experience.
CHALLENGES
The client needed a robust, agile, scalable, easily-managed data center infrastructure to support the processing and performance requirements for multiple business units (Gaming and Back-of-House), while accommodating a 5-year growth plan. Additionally, this data center needed to be managed and administered from a remote location with limited reliance on local IT staff.
SOLUTION
We designed and implemented a Unified Data Center solution to provide highly fault-tolerant, scalable and agile compute and storage capabilities to all business units with distinct and secure operational segmentation. This state-of-the-art Flexpod solution included a fully-integrated Cisco, NetApp, and VMware solution architecture.
BENEFITS
This Unified Data Center solution provides a holistic architecture that provides separate and secure storage and processing for each business unit, is highly available and enables remote staff to easily provision new physical and virtual servers. This combination of security, ease of use, and scalability ensures that the business can quickly and securely adapt to nearly any opportunity.
CHALLENGES
Our client needed a wireless solution to support their entire horse track and gaming property. The solution needed to support many user constituents including: guests, mobile wagering, technician dispatch, warehouse management and corporate users. Key business requirements included data / access security, ability to support significant peaks of guest users, ability to add new applications on-demand, and need to maintain the interior design aesthetics by hiding wireless access points.
SOLUTION
We designed and implemented a Unified Wireless architecture with segmented VLANs to support each business unit and constituent group. We worked hand-in-hand with the Interior Design team and Contractor to ensure all wireless access points were not visible to guests.
BENEFITS
The Unified Wireless architecture enables all users to access a single robust, secure wireless network from anywhere on this sprawling property with no degradation in service. The design of the solution enables the various business units to quickly and easily add new applications with absolutely no infrastructure redesign as network administration and management is greatly simplified through a single portal.