"The word 'mobile' doesn't begin to describe our operation. Windows 2000 solves the critical remote access issues we are most concerned about. And it enables us to have a very effective enterprise collaboration platform in a highly distributed environment."
— L. J. Walton, program director, Inacom
Company Profile
Inacom is a major systems integrator, reseller, and provider of e-business services including architectural design, technical deployment, and outsource management. A Fortune 500 company based in Omaha, Nebraska, the company has over $6 billion in annual revenues and more than 3,000 active clients.
Situation
Over 95 percent of Inacom's target environment is laptops, so it's no easy feat to manage secure remote access and communications. Windows® 2000 delivers a highly reliable and secure mobile platform, and gives Inacom the infrastructure that its business depends on for collaboration.
Inacom, a Fortune 500 systems integrator and e-business service provider, has about 12,000 employees. That’s a lot of laptops, and a lot of remote employees. Adding to the challenge is the company’s highly distributed environment, with employees based in over 66 locations worldwide, and often working on-site at client locations.
Business Solution
Inacom’s approach to providing services to its clients is to create an on-site “virtual community.” The company relies on mobile and remote access technology to bring teams together quickly to collaborate on customer projects on-site. "There is no one physical location where employees collect on a regular basis,” says L. J. Walton, Inacom’s program director. "Employees literally live and breathe with the customers’ IT organization."
Creating Virtual Communities via Laptops and the Internet
According to Walton, Windows 2000 delivers the platform Inacom needs, particularly the ability to rely on the Internet as a secure network. “The Internet is the central mechanism for collaboration and knowledge exchange in a remote, distributed environment,” says Walton. "It’s the life blood of our organization. The more information we can exchange rapidly, the better we can provide service to our customers." Walton especially likes the incorporation of Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology. "It enables us to get inside our corporate network securely and share confidential information over the Internet," he says.
The ability to go from a dial-up connection to a network smoothly and quickly is also important. "The Connection Manager feature makes a big difference for us, letting us easily change from one access mode to another," Walton says. "I just dial up, validate, and then boom—I'm into the network."
The Glue Holding a Distributed Environment Together for Collaboration
The advantages of the Windows 2000 operating system extend well beyond the realm of laptops. "From the server perspective, the bottom line is this technology provides the platform we need for every team member to get involved and share knowledge,” says Walton. The Active Directory™ service makes the difference. “We can all find each other in Active Directory," he says. "We can schedule virtual meetings on the fly via NetMeeting® conferencing software and the Windows Dialer, for instance. It gives us the glue to hold everything together in a very safe way."
With a solid Active Directory structure in place, Inacom can easily add Windows 2000-based services such as the next version of Microsoft Exchange, code-named “Platinum,” and the Knowledge Management Server, when available. The ability to use Exchange “Platinum” is partly driving Inacom's migration to Windows 2000, says Walton. "Messaging is the first layer of being a collaborative enterprise," he says. Inacom is already relying on beta versions of the product.
A mobile platform that delivers, plus efficient collaboration in a distributed environment. Windows 2000 is a winner for Inacom.
Software and Services
Exchange
Office 2000
Outlook®
Micosoft SQL ServerTM
Windows 2000
Windows NT® 4.0
Inacom runs about 150 servers and over 14,000
workstations. The company's core applications
include Office, Exchange, and
Outlook.
For More Information
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