That's the theory behind the GE Access' Advanced Computing Center, which is filling its intended role as a sales tool by helping integrators close deals and bring in more revenue, said company executives.

The center opened nearly a year ago in Chicago as a facility for integrators and their customers to test and benchmark high-end server solutions.

"Typically, we would do a benchmark as a validation of our recommendation," said Dennis Mroz, regional director at PDC Solutions Inc., a network integrator based in King of Prussia, Pa.

Center stage: Center offers access to expensive, high-end technology. Includes products from Sun, SGI, Oracle, Intel.

PDC has run three tests at the center, and they have resulted in two successful sales, with the third sale still pending, said Mroz.

The facility includes products from Sun Microsystems Inc., Silicon Graphics Inc., Oracle Corp., Intel Corp., and others. GE Access, based here, also can procure additional products to meet the specifications of a given benchmark an integrator plans to run, said Ken Zivic, vice president of enterprise solutions at the distributor.

Forsythe Solutions Group Inc. has used the center twice and has secured sales totaling close to $3 million as a result, said Jamie Holzkamp, director of Sun systems and services at the Skokie, Ill.-based systems integrator.

The center's biggest draw to integrators is the access it provides to expensive, high-end technology such as Sun's Enterprise 10000, said Holzkamp.

For example, Forsythe ran benchmark tests at the center to assure a Green Bay, Wis.-based trucking company that consolidating its operations onto a single Enterprise 10000 server would outperform its current setup of several smaller servers, Holzkamp said.

The testing convinced the customer, and Forsythe closed a $2-million sale, which included the $1.6 million Sun server, software from Veritas Software Corp., Mountain View, Calif., and installation services.

Integrators can rent space in the facility at the rate of $500 per server per day to test multiple product configurations, either in person at the center or remotely over the Internet via a virtual private network, Zivic said.

"We want this to be a service [that integrators] are providing to show the customer that they are actually touching and [using] the equipment," said Zivic.

GE Access plans to expand the center by adding more conference rooms and a customer lounge for integrators to use while their benchmarks are running.

Integrators that have completed benchmark testing at the center have closed a server sale 80 percent of the time, typically with price tags of between $250,000 and $400,000 per server, Zivic said.

Since opening last May, the center has housed 21 benchmark projects for GE Access integrators, two of which were performed remotely, he said.

Eight more benchmark projects are scheduled to take place over the next few months, Zivic said. "We're booked through June," he said.

The projects typically last for between one week and four weeks, Zivic said.

Over the next year, GE Access said it plans to implement HP OpenView systems-management software to provide more complete data during benchmark testing. The distributor also plans to run independent benchmarks itself and provide white papers to its integrators on configurations it has tested, Zivic said.CRN