Airport ground handling company Apron Services, a Transnet company, has installed Faxination, from Server Tools, to drive its centralised faxing and messaging network.
Alongside Faxination Apron Services has also installed SpaceGuard, the industry-standard NT network resource utility and DriveImage, the NT cloning and system replication tool, to help manage and grow its distributed national WAN.
All three products were supplied by NT utility specialist Server Tools. Apron Services, with 80% of the local market, is one of two authorised ground handling companies in South Africa. It provides ground handling services, including baggage and passenger handling, to SAA and other carriers at Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth airports. "Since we`ve started using Faxination at our Johannesburg International head office, electronic faxing has become part of our company philosophy," says Apron Services IT manager Christophe Pasquet. "Documents are scanned and sent as quickly and easily as e-mail using Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, and received in the same way."
Fax receipt is critical to Apron Services` business. Complaints, commendations, information requests and service queries are integral to its service delivery strategies. Pasquet says the challenge was to integrate multiple technologies, such as fax and e-mail, using its NT WAN to promote centralised control of messaging resources.
"Faxination guarantees total confidentiality when sending or receiving faxes, fax delivery, intelligent lowest-cost routing and reduced TCO by maximising existing hardware and software," he says.
Faxination integrated seamlessly with Apron Services` existing IT infrastructure. It was installed on a Pentium Pro server which doubles as a print and fax server. It has 96MB of RAM and a dedicated hardware fax-processing card to reduce the imaging burden on the CPU. "We`re phasing out our analogue fax machines, although we`ll probably keep one in a cupboard as backup," Pasquet quips.
"SpaceGuard is being used to address quota management of network disk space per user for 120 users," says Pasquet. "DriveImage helps us achieve a long-term goal - quick deployment and installation of all new PCs on our network."
IT staff control each utility from a central station without disrupting workflow. Pasquet adds that for users, electronic faxing simplifies their lives, while the other utilities simplify his.
"As our IT needs increase, so does our focus on management and centralisation," says Pasquet. ,Server Tools is a subsidiary of Dimension Data.
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