Loomis, Fargo & Co. & the UIULoomis Fargo cashes in with the help of the Universal Imaging Utility
With such a large and dispersed work force, managing the company's IT needs from its headquarters in Houston, Texas, is very challenging. Having over 3000 workstations within the company, a multitude of laptops, plus trying to maintain these workstations so they hold identical software and drivers was a never-ending task. The management of enterprise applications requires substantial effort in many large organizations. Software updates, patches, new versions and industry-specific solutions all have to be installed and set up to meet varied desktop, laptop, storage-drive and controller requirements. When device drivers are brought into the equation, it becomes even more complicated. Software-based cloning was already in place at Loomis Fargo. This allowed the IT department to roll out new applications and patches across multiple computers in a few straightforward steps. First a 'perfect' or 'Master' desktop or laptop is set up with all the required system and application software installed. An Image-File or 'Image' (a copy of this perfect machine) is then created and this Image is copied simultaneously onto multiple Desktops or Laptops which can then be thought of as 'clones' - exact replicas of the Master system. The cloning package Loomis Fargo uses to updates their computers is Ghost. Even with that, Loomis Fargo still created and maintained 15-20 master images to support the various brands of desktops and laptops at multiple sites within the company. "When updating these images it would take a day per image to complete," said Paul Ramagost, Network System Analyst, Loomis Fargo. "Even by only updating these images once a quarter, it would take the best part of the month to complete the task." Time was not the only issue when it came to updating the images. Spending in excess of an entire day just to create one image often meant that mistakes found their way into the tedious image-creation process. Mistakes, caused by interruptions and human error, resulted in dissimilar images being used throughout their environment. Loomis Fargo identified these problems and began the search to find an efficient and time-friendly way to more regularly and more accurately update their images. Loomis Fargo was already familiar with Binary Research through its encounters with the Ghost cloning software, which Binary Research originally developed and sold to Symantec. Binary Research introduced the Universal Imaging Utility to Loomis Fargo. A relatively new product, the UIU allows users to create a hardware-independent master image file, greatly reducing the time and expense associated with image creation and maintenance. Using the UIU, Loomis Fargo is able to use one master image throughout its environment of disparate desktops and laptops. "Running UIU on the selected ideal machine prior to an Image being captured means error messages and 'blue screen' failures on the subsequent clone machines are virtually eliminated," explains Jim Szopinski, Vice President, Binary Research. "Rolling-out software updates and setting-up new desktops and laptops can be managed within a matter of minutes and a previously complex and time-consuming operation can be transformed into a simple, straightforward, fully-automated task," he continued. "This enables IT departments to drastically reduce the time and money spent on Image creation and deployment by streamlining the cloning process. The UIU works with virtually all brands and models of Windows-running laptops and desktops. This ensures that IT resources may be focused on business critical tasks." Loomis Fargo's support desk gets requests to rebuild five to ten computers every week. Spyware and software conflicts are the most common causes. After about fifteen minutes of troubleshooting, if the affected computer is not fixed, IT technicians find it faster to simply re-image it. It was an extremely time-consuming process to update and maintain the 15-20 images required in their environment. Since the introduction of the UIU, the ability to have a single image that can run on all its machines has meant Loomis Fargo have found it quicker and more efficient to send fresh images out to rebuild these machines. "Now we are working with just one ideal Image to support our IT network, we are finding the management of the image is completed quickly and more frequently than ever before. The quality of image means it is easier to update and leaves little room for errors to creep into the system," concluded Ramagost. About the Universal Imaging Utility The UIU is developed by Big Bang LLC, a Milwaukee, WI-based software training, consulting and development company and pioneer of hardware-independent imaging. Big Bang has partnered with Binary Research International, Inc., of Glendale, WI and its English subsidiary - Binary Resource (UK) Ltd. Binary, a developer and provider of IT Training and a Distributor of software, is best known as being part of the company that developed Ghost, the world's first software cloning utility. Learn more about Big Bang on the web at www.UIUforYou.com.
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