It’s an innovative approach — combine the ubiquitous ease and user-friendliness of the Mac with the newly established Xserve abilities as the foundation of an enterprise infrastructure. Centralizing computing services, as well as running specific applications, are things Apple does extremely well.

Gauvin, as mentioned, wants to be more proactive, moving beyond the basic mandate of IT. The entire team sees unique aspects of the technology that can be used to help the company develop business and enhance customer service.

One drag on demand is distance, so one of the mandates at Marketel is to cut the boundaries between the company and its customers. Lots of people are chatting these days, but using the technology for proprietary business purposes is not a solution many have implemented.

“We don’t want the customer to feel far away,” Gauvin explains. “We’d been thinking of iChat as a way to eliminate the time and space between us. What’s unique to Mac is the security over iChat. It’s a real business tool.”

Gauvin’s team is taking the concept even further by integrating Apple and Blackberry. Having successfully tested the concept, he is connecting a Blackberry server directly to the iChat server “flawlessly, with no viruses, no issues, no problems.”

The value-added service it provides means Marketel can reduce its courier costs, better manage its conference storage requirements, lower its long distance calling charges and more.

“We are ‘avant-gardiste’ — leaders in implementing technology in the ad agency world,” he states. “In our world, a technology solution means great creativity, high availability, cost-efficient deployment, and lots of options. Marketel will use every technology Apple has to offer, because we know we can do more with it.”

Exceeding the Stated Goals

Marketel is using its migration to the Mac OS X platform to direct support its mission to create demand, by:

• supporting creativity and productivity on the desktop;
• reducing downtime due to viruses; and
• minimizing operational budgets.

Gauvin says they’ve managed to do that, and much more.

“Artists are regularly moving 1.5 GB PhotoShop files around, sharing them among other workstations, moving them among studio, client services or other servers, without clogging the network,” Gauvin itemizes, saying that as the team’s conversion project moves forward, workflows will speed up even further.

He’s just finalized plans to acquire and install a huge 42-terabyte Apple Xsan storage area network solution, connected to a full 2 gigabit fibre network. The acquisition builds on existing demands for reliability and security, but its greater capacity and high degree of availability also opens the door to many new possibilities.

“From the Marketel point of view, the future is looking very bright. Marketel is dedicated to the latest, most up-to-date technology that serves the needs of our company and clients. We are ‘avant-gardiste’ — leaders in implementing technology in the ad agency world,” he states. “We will use every technology Apple has to offer, because we know we stay ahead of the game that way.”