Using Y2K as food for thought

While many companies are preferring to abstain from further IT spend until the rollover of the new year, Genfood is prepared to meet the challenges that 2000 and beyond will bring.

Seeing the Year 2000 issue as an opportunity to upgrade its IT systems, Genfood Industries has just completed a R26 million integration deal with Datacentrix. As one of the biggest Microsoft Terminal Server implementations in South Africa, the nine month project has ensured that the 74 national Genfood sites are Year 2000 compliant.

Genfood recently bought Premier Food Industries, making it one of the largest food producing companies in South Africa, including the production of maize, corn, rice and bread. The challenge was to convert the existing Premier Foods` mainframe hardware and software solution to a new standardised Wintel-based environment. Since Genfood required a one-stop-shop for the solution, Datacentrix was commissioned for the complete rollout, which included the preparation of the hardware and the implementation of the Microsoft software products. The solution allows for Year 2000-compliant centralised computing in a distributed environment over the 74 sites running the Accpac financial solution, providing Genfood with effective knowledge sharing across the organisation.

"The value-add component of the solution was delivered by the design, consulting, installation, configuration and support provided by Datacentrix," said Charl Joubert, Genfood Group`s IT manager. "Core to our decision to choosing Datacentrix, was its Microsoft accreditation, since Microsoft represents a cost-effective open standards solution, compared to that of proprietary legacy systems."

"The success of this project demonstrates the value that our partners add to our customers` business," said Albie Bester, enterprise partner manager at Microsoft South Africa. "By offering a total solution from a single company, the integration is more stable and the customer benefits from a single point of contact that understands their business."

Microsoft products used:

.         Microsoft Terminal Server

.         Microsoft NT Server Enterprise

.         Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise

.         Microsoft Exchange Enterprise

.         Microsoft Proxy Server

.         Microsoft Internet Information Server

Hardware used:

.         13 HP eight-way processors

.         HP Eight-way SMP servers

.         55 HP networking servers

.         650 HP Vectra desktops using HP ProCurve networking hardware

.         DLT backup library solutions