When clearing and forwarding company Megafreight realised its freight logistics system was difficult to support and falling behind in the latest technology, it found a long-term solution in Citrix server-based computing.
Megafreight financial director, Kevin Fall, explains that the company`s freight logistics system was previously based on a Unix IBM AIX solution, with a diverse desktop environment.
"The system was difficult to manage and it would have been costly to upgrade all our hardware to a standard," Fall adds.
Reseller Accronym proposed a back office solution based on Microsoft Windows NT, with Office 2000 for the front end. Citrix`s server-based computing technology formed the "glue" for the system and, with its centralised offering, saved costs on hardware upgrades.
Nadine Barnard, Citrix product manager at distributor Workgroup, says the Citrix solution had answered more than just one of Megafreight`s problems, whereas a pure Unix solution would`ve only solved a section of the problems.
"Our new system is a lot simpler and easier to manage and we are not hampered by technological changes," Fall says.
"In addition, we have a scalable framework that can accommodate whatever we throw at it."
The system caters for about 100 users, mostly operations staff on the freight side.
Accronym sales manager, Keith Benjamin, says they have an onsite engineer for support and maintenance at Megafreight, who will also oversee the project`s next step of getting the company`s Cape Town and Bloemfontein branches onto the system. Durban and Pietermaritzburg are already running successfully and connect via a Diginet line.
Fall says that the project took longer than expected because there were unforeseen hardware issues in-house. "However, now that it is live, we can see a big difference between when it worked and when it didn`t."
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