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Tech overhaul a boon to Canadian packaging leader

When it comes to its manufacturing of polyethylene and print products, Belle-Pak Packaging Inc. is a resounding success.

The company was recently honoured with a Business Excellence Award by the Markham Board of Trade and recognized by Deloitte & Touche with a Best Management Company Award.

But, its IT infrastructure was lagging behind Belle-Pak's state-of-the-art manufacturing plant.

When Belle-Pak hired Tazmin Esmail, a technology consultant with TSK Management, to implement the MISys manufacturing software package, she discovered the existing IT infrastructure could not support the new software package.

Belle-Pak's operational technology had become obsolete. It was a mix of DOS, Microsoft® Windows® 98 and Windows® XP operating systems and a mishmash of hardware configurations and hosted e-mail services.

"After assessing their system, I found that it was old, unreliable and not secure. Belle-Pak needed to upgrade quickly and establish a solid IT infrastructure to build on," says Ms. Esmail. "It's a very bottom-line driven company, so management expects immediate returns and instant results."

Ms. Esmail says she didn't look any further than Dell for a solution. "I recommended Dell primarily for its responsiveness, strong presence in the market and availability of implementation partners. My clients had business priorities that needed to be addressed in a timely manner and they were looking for business solutions enabled by reliable technology and strong partnerships."

Belle-Pak is an industry leader with over 200 employees, so cleaning up its IT was no small feat. Ultimately, the company upgraded to standards-based technologies and implemented new business software.

Belle-Pak is now using a Dell PowerEdge T610 server. "Within that we have six virtual servers," says Ms. Esmail. "Each server is dedicated to a specific function: office productivity, terminal services, security, finance and two servers for their legacy software, running on XP."

The company is running on all Dell hardware and Microsoft® software - Windows Small Business Server® 2008 and a Windows® 7 Professional operating system. With standard configurations and a managed IT shop, the result is a reliable, secure and expandable IT environment.

"Our team found it easy to implement Microsoft software solutions on Dell machines. This as critical, as Belle-Pak wanted delivery in less than two months," says Ms. Esmail.

As well, the company uses all of the features that Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 offers; cost-effective and flexible communication tools that allow for increased mobility.

E-mails are now seamlessly synced with the management team's BlackBerrys. Terminal services give staff the flexibility to work whenever and wherever they want with easy and secure access to company information.

Twenty-nine OptiPlex workstations are now up and running and their newly trained recipients have never been happier. "Everything just works, nothing goes down, and their day-to-day business operations are much smoother," says Ms. Esmail.

The company now has the platform to implement its desired manufacturing software, ready to automate its entire manufacturing plant, from raw materials to finished goods and from shipping to invoicing," she says. "Before we transitioned to Dell, the old infrastructure just wouldn't have been able to cope."

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