Patton Harris and Rust and Associates has 13 branches. Management and IT needed a way to help these offices work on projects together to optimize company resources. Using GlobalSCAPE WAFS gave PHR+A fast file access across branches using minimal system resources. No management is required as it operates in the background and real time byte level differencing not only reduces bandwidth usage and spikes but also the changes are sent as they happen – not when they are needed.
GlobalSCAPE WAFS delivers at PHR+AFor many companies, to say that the Internet has made the world smaller is nothing more than a
cliché. At Patton Harris Rust & Associates (PHR+A), it has become a way of life. With over dozen
branch of? ces spanning the Mid-Atlantic Region, this engineering and land development services
company searched for a technology solution that could facilitate wide-scale project access and shar-
ing throughout their geographically dispersed enterprise.
PHR+A has found a way to access and collaborate without the typical delays caused by bandwidth
and latency. The solution is a 2 MB, downloadable application called GlobalSCAPE WAFS.
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PHR+A is a multi-disciplinary design ? rm offering extensive engineering and land development services to the private and public sector -not unlike what you may expect to ? nd at mid-sized ? rms from all across the country. What is unique, however, is the approach that PHR+A has taken to opti-mize their human capital among thirteen dispersed locations. For example, to meet increasing project demands at their D.C.-area of? ce, where the cost of living is nearly double that of the surrounding cities, PHR+A sought to maximize their resources in their Allentown, PA of? ce, where labor costs and living costs are considerably lower.
In fact, with the exception of short-term projects like simple ALTA and boundary surveys, PHR+A primarily operates in collaboration by sharing their workload across geographic separations as they see ? t to utilize their staff most ef? ciently. Project teams are rarely restricted to just one branch of? ce or city. Their method relies heavily on the continual success of IT solutions that make such project access and collaboration possible. And nobody is more aware of this reliance than Mark Harris, one of their IT support staff.' '
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"The engineers usually aren't aware of IT until there's a problem," Mark said with a chuckle. Mark has been evaluating various methods to support the company's ambitious multi-location strategy for years. "We looked at GlobalSCAPE several years ago, but it almost looked too simple," Mark explained.
Instead, Mark ? rst implemented a Distributed File System (DFS) in Windows® 2000. With projects averaging 30-40 GB of data each, the DFS approach was unable to keep up. "With Windows 2000, DFS uses the CIFS protocol, not byte-level differencing, so a 50 MB ? le With projects averaginghas to transmit 50 MB of data to synchronize. ''30-40 GB of data each, Whole projects could take two or three weeks the DFS approach was to transfer," Mark explained. In an effort to unable to keep up. improve transfer speeds, Mark also brie? y examined a WAN-acceleration appliance solution, but discovered that it, too, would require large amounts of cache and would increase technology costs signi? cantly in order to operate. Further, users would still have wait times to access key project and work ? les.
Today, most of PHR+A's collaboration is facilitated by simple FTP transfers combined with a thick standards document to manually maintain ? le coherence. There is no ? le locking, so de-viation from policy can mean costly re-work. But, what concerns Mark most is the duplication of data that pollutes his storage space and back-ups. He explained, "Every local server has a 'download' folder and an 'upload' folder. Within those folders we ? nd multiple versions of each ? le. So, we are doubling, and often quadrupling the amount of storage required for a single drawing or project ? le." Although the overall cost of storage is decreasing in today's markeett,, tthhee IT costs of managing andd bbaacckkiinngg-up excess data can be high.
For PHR+A, where pprroojjeecctt ccoollllaabboorraattiioonn iiss more than a luxury, but ratheerr aa ccrriittiiccaall bbuussiinneess function, there is litttllee ooppppoorrttuunniittyy ttoo tteesstt nneeww ssolutions in a workinngg eennvviirroonnmmeenntt.. But in Janu-ary 2007, Mark got aa cchhaannccee ttoo ttrryy ssoommeetthhiinngg nneeww. PHR+A aaccqquuiirreedd aa ssmmall company in New-port News, VA, wheerree tthheeyy wwoouulldd bbee ccoollllaabboorraattiinngg aalmoosstt eexxcclluussiivveely with the existing Virginia Beach location. Neaarrllyy tthhrreeee yyeeaarrss aa... [download for more]
