CLIENT SUCCESS STORIES
The Customer - NATION MEDIA GROUP (NMG)
 Nation Media Group (NMG) is East and Central Africa’s largest media establishment. The organisation has interest in both print and electronic media. NMG has made heavy investments in its IT set-up & is one of the most advanced technology environments. The hardware platform setup comprises of Compaq Intel cluster servers running SAP, SUN Solaris servers running various media applications and approximately 500 Macintosh and Desktop publishing workstations. The group has recently completed their first phase of deploying an enterprise wide Gigabit networking infrastructure connecting all its branch offices across a WAN.
The Challenge
As part of the NMG was planning a migration from a predominantly Windows NT domain architecture to a Windows 2000 domain configuration. It is intended that all their messaging and collaboration needs would be met by using Microsoft Exchange 2000 server.
For today's organizations, reliable and efficient communication is a key to future success. Electronic mail is the “can’t do without it” application of the new millennium. When choosing a messaging system, NMG sought one that is both powerful, manageable, and has a functionality that matches their company's particular working style. With the embedded dependency their messaging infrastructure and NMG’s Active Directory Server, it was paramount for the entire solution to be built on an extremely high available infrastructure platform.
NMG have invested in a state of the art, layer 3 high speed network infrastructure and have settled on Compaq as the deployment platform of choice.
As an initial investment towards the implementation of a redundant Active Directory Server (ADS) solution, the following entry-level Storage Area Network solution was deployed:
- A Compaq Raid Array 4100 External Storage and
- One Exchange Server cluster consisting of two (2) Compaq Proliant DL 580 Servers.
In addition NMG deployed an Enterprise Backup Solution (EBS) using a Compaq TL 891 DLT library that integrates with the above SAN infrastructure. The Backup Solution has also been configured to backup the existing SAP Business application cluster.
The impending benefit, the EBS would deliver was an enterprise-wide backup solution for both the SAP applications as well as the Messaging solution to be deployed on the ADS. The Microsoft components of the ADS are proposed in this document. The backup would be committed on a dedicated data network via the Fibre Channel SAN described above, freeing up the NMG LAN and therefore reduce overheads.
To facilitate automated back-ups, CA’s ArcServe back-up software was deployed. For a consolidated back-up of all servers and applications, NMG had to acquire the complete Suite of ArcServe Back-up software with the relevant agents and options to cater for all the database and other network servers.
As a leading Compaq authorized Systems reseller and a Microsoft Business partner, ComputerPoint has approached the above requirement with due diligence and consideration as would be expected of an experienced technology solutions provider to the East African corporate business. Our rich experience in deploying FOUR of the only such solutions deployed in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania has empowered us to apply considerable detail in this proposal to achieve a successful deployment of :
- The Active Directory Server cluster
- Enterprise-wide messaging solution and
- The rollout of NMG’s desktop and platform environment as is intended in the solicitation of this bid.
ComputerPoint intends to utilize our inspiration of NMG’s needs through our experience as an existing contractor in deploying the hardware platform described above on which the proposed solution will predominantly reside.
The fact that we are inherently involved in the deployment of this solution, by virtue of being the contractor for the Compaq Enterprise Server and Compaq Storageworks solutions, we have attempted to demonstrate the considerable value that NMG will accrue in contracting ComputerPoint for the delivery of the complete solution proposed in this bid.
In the ComputerPoint ROI document, we have applied careful consideration of the challenges at NMG in delivering their products to markets faster, making customer and partner relationships stronger, and enhancing the productivity of employees in an endeavor that all contribute business value to their organizations.
Brief Requirements
NMG has identified Microsoft as the platform of choice for a; it’s business application needs. In line with this standardisation, NMG opted to deploy Microsoft Exchange 2000, which is the mail & messaging solution from Microsoft. To host this enterprise wide mail & messaging solution, NMG wanted a highly available and dependent platform.
ComputerPoint Recommends Compaq Clustering & Enterprise Backup solution: Based on above high-availability requirements of NMG, ComputerPoint alongwith Compaq designed ad recommended a high-availability cluster environment based on Compaq DL580 servers and the primary storage RA 4100 solution. Redundancies and fail-over as been built into this Active directory cluster design.
The solution also offers to NMG an enterprise-backup solution based on the Compaq TL891. This will be the first enterprise back-up solution to be deployed in Kenya. With this solution, the entire back-up procedures at NMG have been made un-attended type and also automated. NMG can also backup across the network, automatically, all other servers, on this device. With this cluster design, ComputerPoint will offer a 99.99% uptime platform to NMG mail & messaging solution.
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