Intel, CRN Honor Innovative Solution Providers

American CompuSystems was recognized for its pioneering work with the Intel communications server in a Florida elementary school, while Proactive Technologies earned kudos for a storage networking solution it deployed at printing giant Quebecor.

As an Intel premier provider, American CompuSystems has been serving SMB accounts in Clearwater, Fla., for seven years, according to President and co-founder Luis Rodriguez. During that time, the family-run operation has extended far beyond its roots as a white-box systems builder into Internet access and network cabling services. It offers complete solutions that it has dubbed "completeware," a concept the $2.6 million company has trademarked.

The solution for which it was honored Monday evening at an Intel partner conference here involved one of the first installations of the Intel Converged Communications Platform (ICCP) at the new Espiritu Santo Catholic School in Safety Harbor, Fla. In fact, the school received the first beta unit released by Intel to customers, said Rodriguez.

Phase one of the project was completed last year and included the deployment of a 26-system computer lab and six-system media center linked by wireless networks; an Ethernet network that links classrooms and administrative offices throughout the school; a RAID system; as well as the ICCP server. The VAR expects to deploy more computers using dual Xeon processors when the remaining classrooms open this summer, and the price tag for the entire project will ultimately be around $300,000, said Rodriguez. The VAR pulled in Allied Telesyn for its media converters, Watchguard for its firewall and Intermedia for bandwidth provisioning.

American CompuSystems beat out a much larger competitor, IKON Systems, for the account because of its ability to deploy the telephony and wireless parts of the solution and because of the company's reputation for quality service within the diocese, Rodriguez said. This was despite the fact that IKON bid was cheaper, he added.

The solution provider began investing more heavily in its relationship with Intel two years ago, encouraged by its local representative, said Rodriguez. "They are our primary vendor partner. Very rarely do any of the other companies send an actual rep to see us," he said. "We offer very personalized service to our customers; we like to be treated in the same way."

American CompuSystems expects the solution it designed for Espiritu Santo to be used in other schools, and Rodriguez said it has received leads from the architect and electrical engineer that were part of the Espiritu Santo school construction.

Proactive Technologies' winning enterprise solution was also originally designed for one customer, but the solution provider now expects to offer the redundant storage area network to its broader client base in the graphics industry, said Pat Taylor, president and founding partner of Proactive, Carrollton, Texas.

For the Quebecor solution, Proactive assembled a 2-Tbyte Fibre Channel SAN run by two dual-processor Intel Storage Domain Servers. The SAN serves up to five application servers at rates of up to 185 MBps. The network is capable of moving around huge data files, often as large as 500 Mbytes, said Taylor. Aside from Intel products, the solution uses storage management software from DataCore and Fibre Channel switching technology from Qlogic.

Proactive opted to use white-box servers built with standard technology so that it would be able to scale with its customer's storage needs. "Intel is critical to our whole service approach. You've got to have high-quality equipment if you're betting the bank on it," said Taylor.

In addition, Intel helps Proactive with business management issues. "When you have an engineering focus, you're not always good about the other things you need to do to help your company grow," said Taylor.

Founded in 1997, Proactive brought in revenue of about $5 million last year and expects to hit the $6.8 million mark this year, he said.

The Quebecor solution in Atlanta will save the printing company an estimated $250,000 over the life of the project, said Taylor, and Proactive is deploying a second solution in Montreal. Aside from the cost savings to the client, the solution has resulted in a fourfold increase in data-transfer rates, he said.

The solution costs $30,000 to $150,000 without the storage. Proactive rolls the cost of service and keeping the systems up and running on a 24x7 basis into the overall price tag, Taylor said.

CRN's Best In Show awards series is being presented this year at the partner conferences of vendors that have led the way in creating cooperative partnerships with their indirect sales channels. The next series of awards will be presented in April. The first Best In Show recipient was AnswerThink, which was honored last month at IBM's PartnerWorld gathering in San Francisco.