CASE STUDIES

Acme Refrigeration

ACME Refrigeration Keeps Cool with
CMS Support

Keeping cool is big business.

From catering to IT server rooms, the sheer variety of size and types of chilling, refrigeration and air conditioning systems is huge. Overlay this with the need for a service and support engineer infrastructure, and spares requirements, and you can begin to appreciate why an efficient IT system, supported by CMS Group, is vital to ACME Refrigeration.

Based in Blackburn, Lancashire, ACME Refrigeration is a leading provider of refrigeration and air conditioning equipment to the hospitality trade, and corporate IT server rooms. It is part of H&H Refrigeration which also includes Pentland Wholesale - a wholesale suppler of chilling, refrigeration and air conditioning systems to resellers like ACME. For this reason ACME also has a general tool and spares outlet close by for resellers and their engineers.

Service and support for bar and catering equipment, refrigeration and air conditioning is a complex market observes, David Finch, Management Information Systems Manager at ACME: "Most pubs are a mix of systems some of which are owned by the brewery, the landlord and equipment providers. It's important our engineer knows which piece of equipment they are supposed to service and its support status to ensure accurate billing."

ACME employs 125 people at its offices and warehouse, 50 of which are mobile service engineers operating in the North and North West of England. It was the decision to migrate their Enterprise System, together with WiFi and VPN links, from a Unix to a Windows platform that prompted ACME to contact CMS Group. "Initially we were looking for a company to just help us switch over to Windows 2000 but it soon became clear that the size of the client software for each of the network's 70 PCs would cripple the network.

It was at this point that we got in touch with CMS Group who, as a Citrix Gold Partner, could assist us in deploying a more network-friendly, thin-client solution," said Finch. CMS performed a trouble-free migration of the Enterprise System to Windows on Citrix thin client. So much so that ACME has retained CMS to provide an on-going IT support service.

Breweries have annual preventative maintenance agreements with ACME covering the regular servicing of equipment. In the event of a problem outside the maintenance schedule, landlords call ACME's call centre who assess the problem and allocate an engineer. In all cases, ACME relies on instant access to its IT systems to ensure service engineers are dispatched to the right place, at the right time and servicing the right equipment. Each engineer is equipped with a PDA and jobs are allocated to a virtual in-tray by the call centre. When the job is complete, ACME's IT systems then automatically bill the customer as well as updating their profile. Recent changes in no-smoking regulations have highlighted the importance of keeping an up-to-date profile. "In many cases ground-level, air conditioning condensor units had to be moved to make space for outside smoking areas. As a result these were often wall mounted, requiring ladder / scaffolding access and so two engineers are now needed to complete the condensor service rather than one. By consulting the customer profiles we know which need two engineers and allocate them accordingly," David Finch explained.

When the company recently switched to Windows 2003, ACME took the opportunity to switch to new servers and upgrade the older servers which could then be used for server replication. CMS worked with ACME on both developing a disaster recovery strategy, based on server replication, and handling the IT practicalities.

ACME's disaster recovery strategy uses Double Take server replication software based on asynchronous real-time replication and automatic failover to ensure both the live and back-up systems are in sync. It also provides continuous data protection by sending an up-to-the-minute copy of the data as it is being changed to the back-up server. In the event of a problem with the main system, ACME can decide if the problem warrants a fail-over to the back-up system. Finch continued, "With CMS's help we regularly test the disaster recovery plan. This is important in that we prove that if the 'live' system went down in a real disaster we're able to recover it, and secondly it gives us confidence in the integrity of our back-up servers as they take over."

ACME also makes use of CMS's Requisite Service to buy IT equipment. This provides a single point of contact for systems and peripherals that are consistent with ACME's overall IT infrastructure and fully spec'd and tested prior to delivery.

For day-to-day IT support ACME relies on CMS's flexible, out-tasking service. "With over 20 years experience we know our market and business model, what we don't have is in-house IT expertise. This is where CMS comes in. We look to them to provide an IT support service for significant problems that we can't handle ourselves. One such recent project has been the development of a secure remote access facility for our sales team, so that they are able to spend more time visiting customers."

"Overall, CMS provides a professional and intelligent IT service that makes them easy to work with; and we know that we can call on a wide set of IT skills and know-how, as and when we need it, to assist with specific IT projects such as server replication," concluded Finch.

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