Thin is In

Rumpke Consolidated Cos. Inc., headquartered in Cincinnati, is among the largest private, family-owned waste management and recycling companies in the nation. Founded in 1932, the company began as a coal and junkyard business in Carthage, Ohio, and has grown to include nine landfills and eight recycling centers. Additionally, Rumpke manages a portable restroom enterprise and a hydraulics and machining business. Today Rumpke employs approximately 2,000 people and manages a fleet of 1,200 vehicles.

With more than 20 offices across four states and a small IT department comprised of 18 technicians and support staff that manages roughly 750 terminals, Rumpke faced the challenge of trying to effectively manage and provide IT services to data users across a number of different locations. This challenge was compounded by persistent hardware problems among the company’s fleet of 200 IBM "thin clients," or network computers without a hard disk drive in which the bulk of the data processing occurs on the server. The IT team spent a significant amount of time on the road reconfiguring or replacing malfunctioning equipment for remote data users.

DOWNSIZING

"In 2000, we first incorporated thin clients into our infrastructure, primarily because of the cost advantage of purchasing a thin client over a PC," says Jennifer Peters, supervisor of infield services for Rumpke. "After our initial order, however, we hadn’t seen any major advantages. When our lease was up we decided to test thin clients from other vendors," she adds.

As Peters sought out a new solution, she also wanted to address a power problem: The existing thin clients required unique power cords that were difficult to manage. They had external power grids with special power cords and large power adaptor bricks that were cumbersome and difficult to replace.

"Most of our sites are in heavily industrial or isolated locations and, therefore, prone to power spikes," Peters says. "If we had a power spike, it would wipe out the configuration on the thin clients, which required additional configuration and support." She adds, "As a result of these power cord issues and management problems, we made the decision to work with other vendors for our next batch of thin clients."

Although Peters wasn’t familiar with IGEL, a Germany-based firm specializing in the IT hardware market for server-based computing, prior to her first demo, a consulting company recommended the IGEL LX Compact for its ease of use, reliability and powerful performance. Rumpke Consolidated’s infield service technicians tried out the demo and were impressed with how easily the IGEL thin clients connected to the Citrix and AS 400 environment. Each IGEL thin client also came with a universal power cord, which eliminated the hassle of looking for new cords or tinkering with oversized power bricks.

"Configuration difficulties and special power cords were two problems we faced with our old thin clients," Peters says. "The IGEL thin clients, however, came with universal power cords that were easy to plug into an active jack, which was a vast improvement."

She continues, "From a deployment perspective, the IGEL thin clients were a breeze to configure." Peters adds, "In the end, it was the ease of configuration coupled with the universal power cords that encouraged us to switch to IGEL thin clients."

A VIRTUAL IMPROVEMENT

Once Rumpke’s three-year lease with IGEL ended, the infield services team decided to shop around again, to ensure the company was getting the most for its money. A big part of Rumpke’s decision to stay with IGEL stemmed from the hardware’s ability to run a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) session. Peters’ team was contemplating going from a Citrix farm to a more virtual VMware environment and wanted to have the flexibility to work with solutions that could easily be adapted from Citrix to VMware with minimal effort.

After careful consideration, Rumpke decided the IGEL thin clients could easily be adapted to support the VDI platform and provided the best of both worlds for the end users and administrators looking to adopt a more server-centric computing model.

Additionally, what also set IGEL apart from other vendors was the complimentary Universal Management Suite (UMS), the software that comes embedded in every IGEL thin client. With offices and sites spread across four states, the UMS system allows Rumpke’s infield services team to remotely manage more than 250 thin clients, therefore saving time and minimizing support costs. The UMS software also gives Peters and her team at Rumpke the ability to make changes to the thin clients using groupings and profiles, which means they can automatically set up the terminals with the correct profiles as soon as data users connect to the network.

"The infield services team is responsible for dealing with a network of computers and data users that are dispersed, and the UMS software has given us a tremendous advantage," Peters says. "Without it, the services team would have trouble supporting all of our terminals, and we’d have to make more trips into the field, which is costly and time-consuming."

In the initial integration, Peters’ team ordered 250 IGEL LX Compacts and hired a day-laborer with only basic computing skills to set up the terminals. The services team gave the laborer a network connection and showed him the management tool. Within minutes he was in the process of deploying the profiles they’d created for all 250 thin clients.

"By the end of the day, all devices had been properly configured, and we wouldn’t have been able to do that with 250 PCs," Peters says.

What impressed Peters the most, she says, was that the configured thin clients could be shipped via inter-office mail to any of Rumpke’s sites, with no separate trip required for installation. Peters says the IGEL thin clients were easy to install. Once data users plugged them in using a universal power cord, the service staff would send them the correct profile information, and the end user would be ready to start working.

"During the reevaluation process we considered a number of vendors, but our technicians agreed that the IGEL thin clients offered the most straightforward configuration and the most practical UMS software of the vendors we tested," Peters says. "We’ve been continually impressed with the flexibility and reliability of the terminals—this technology has added tremendous value to our services team, and we are looking forward to continuing to work with IGEL," she adds.

This feature was submitted on behalf of IGEL, with a U.S. office in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. More information is available at www.igel.com.