Keeping ‘IT’ Simple.
The company is one of North America’s leading office furniture manufacturers, but it is also one of that industry’s best-kept secrets.
For 30 years, Toronto-based Tayco has led the quiet life, remaining “under the radar” for all intents and purposes.
But that simple approach is about to change: the company is planning major new product initiatives and publicity campaigns in 2007.
Tayco is going to flex its muscles thanks in part to a solid, productive and expandable information technology infrastructure: the underlying IT infrastructure — the company’s ‘back-end’ — is built around Apple’s high performance Xserve computing platform.
“We’re proud to be where we are,” says Phil Philips, the company’s founder and President. “But there is always room to grow, to innovate, and to educate the industry about who we are and what we can do.”
Tayco’s own story began in 1976, having acquired manufacturing rights to one of the first freestanding office partitions in North America.
Simple panels have become integrated office systems over the years, leading to casegoods, freestanding furniture, acoustic paneling, conference rooms, accessories and seating accommodations for the workplace.
The Canadian manufacturer provides design services, installation and customer service and support to its North American clientele from newly-designed showrooms in Toronto and Chicago.
The company’s I.T. manager, Przemek (pronounced ‘Chem-ick’) Wozniak, fits right in with the company’s innovative plans for the future and some successful precedents from its past: “Keep it simple,” Przemek says of his professional philosophy. “Keep it simple, and keep it open,” he explains. “The focus here is on moving the company forward; isn’t that what a good IT department should do?” he asks rhetorically.
Moving forward — as opposed to, say, constantly putting out fires, re-booting servers, re-building desktops, or forever pushing the IT budget beyond its means. “Our president is a happy guy, and so am I,” Przemek smiles, referencing the fact that Tayco invests 1.25% of its annual revenue towards IT as part of its commitment to effective and efficient operations.
Przemek manages a multi-platform, mixed OS, client -server environment that extends over two physical locations Tayco has in Toronto — in one spot, there’s the office headquarters, main showroom and manufacturing facilities; supplementary offices, additional manufacturing and painting facilities are in the other location. Today, more than 110 employees log onto the IT system from their office desktops — about 90 per cent of which are Windows machines — with little or no idea that behind it all is Apple.
The need for remote log-in from various locations is a very important and solidly supported business requirement. So, too, wireless access from hot spots within the facilities, as well as broadband wireless connection between the two company locations, are actively supported by the IT infrastructure.
Even with a demanding workload, there’s a smile on Przemek’s face, too — he is a happy guy, because he can now configure, control, monitor, update and enhance the company’s computer infrastructure quickly and easily, right from his desktop or remote location.
The company’s IT infrastructure began life in a much different configuration, with just one file server (from a different manufacturer, running Windows 2000 Active Directory). The one box was heavily overburdened, and it offered little expandability.
“The amount of services we were offering was creating a real load strain,” Przemek recalls. “IT was sluggish due to all the services on one server; I knew there had to be a way to bridge all that, to bring the important data storage, home directories, all the important services, together.”
So one slightly used Xserve was acquired, with the idea of trying it out as a replacement for the Windows server. And a rewarding connection to the Apple Consultants Network was made, with the idea of having solid support and hands-on experience with the new (to Przemek) hardware and the software.
David Thompson got the call. He’s an Apple authorized reseller and member of the Consultants Network, operating Digital Transitions in Toronto. The company provides Mac consultation and Apple support to a wide variety of corporate, institutional and educational clients.
Digital Transitions has the unique ability to work directly with Apple Inc. in both the education and corporate fields, helping to scope, design, and build existing and new infrastructures into existing clients and new potential ones. This ability to work with Apple gives Thompson access to some of the top level system engineers and support agents, which in turn allows Digital Transitions to build stable scalable systems.
The company is well positioned to do so, as Thompson explains: “There are some (companies) that support the hardware, some that support the software, and a small few that support the networking of them. We support it all, and we provide on-site servicing.”
Przemek acknowledges “phoning David in a kind of panic” that first night he worked with the used Xserve. “I wasn’t quite able to get the home directory user access working properly, and there were firewall rules to set-up, so we called David and brought him in that night.”
Basically configuring the system from scratch, all the user data was backed up, the internal domain directory was set-up properly with host name look-ups; home share points were set and all available administration tools were configured into the management control panel.
Except for a need to contact the external ISP, so as to make sure DNS entries and outside interface was set up properly, the job was finished about 2 AM the next morning!
The result was just about what was hoped for — the load strains were reduced, and back-up primary domain control was established and a 100 per cent up time with no fail-overs achieved!
Tayco was thrilled, and the president was supportive of an all-Mac environment. Save for the fact that one important CRM software program had not yet been ported to the Mac OS, his wish might have come true. As it stands, Tayco quickly decided to roll out two more Xserves, balancing the network even more and steering the company to an open, expandable IT environment.
