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Case Studies

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  1997 - Hardware Based Image Processing System,
  Englewood, Colorado USA
  
  A $12M proprietary imaging system built in 1992, had become slow and unreliable by 1997. The system could scan documents and store images that could be later output to Micro Fiche, Micro Film and CD. Processing and output of TIFF format images to the Electron Beam Recorders was set up through a hardware processing system utilizing a realtime VxWorks operating system. Unfortunately, approximately 1 in every 20,000 images would appear blank on the Microfilm or Microfiche. Our investigation discovered that TIFF images with a specific number of horizontal lines was common link, so we designed a software based TIFF image preprocessing system to modify offending images on-the-fly. The system integrated perfectly into the workflow and since the software ran on newer hardware, it was easily able to keep up with the hardware based processing system.
  
  
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  2000 - Document Archiving System,
  Englewood Colorado USA
  
  A custom built document storage system for storing mostly images onto 12" optical media. The system had worked well for many years, but now the 12" Optical Drives were past their end-of-life and parts and replacements were getting progressively difficult to find. To solve their immediate needs, we integrated a storage system based on Magneto-Optical media and then developed the hooks into the custom software to "fool" the system into believing that it was still reading/writing from the original 12" Optical system. Once the immediate threat of data loss was averted by the new system, we designed a second piece to store the documents in a folder structure on a NFS storage device. This provided security and speed and is still in use today.
  
  
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  2008 - PC based Accounting System,
  Centennial, Colorado USA
  
  An old accounting system that was inherited from a previous merger was beginning to to run slow and would start showing strange errors. The software had not been upgraded in 6 years and the software manufacturer (from Germany) was no longer in existence. Licensing was tied to the hardware hosted and MAC address on the network controller making the prospect of replacing the hardware almost impossible. Migration to a new accounting system could not be accomplished in a short timeframe and the system was tightly integrated into their custom built brokering system. We determined that the hardware was no longer adequate, but since the system was based on WIndows 2000 we could not find a PC architecture that would be industry class and would have the required drivers. We virtualized the entire system as a clone, ensuring that the MAC address and hardware hosted were the same. The new system performed faster and all errors disappeared. An added benefit was that the new system was easily cloned and backed up providing greater security and smaller maintenance windows.
  
  
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  2011 - Custom built data production system,
  Longford, Ireland
  
  The main server was located at their HQ in California. They used the system through remote telnet console sessions via their corporate VPN. The system ran on a Sequent architecture and was written in Dynix C, shell scripts and an Informix Database. The system had been running well since 1991, however they had speed issues (6 days to accomplish a monthly build) and reliability issues where build would fail after 6 days of processing because a 2GB limit had been reached. We research alternative ways to fix their problem and finally arrived at the conclusion to migrate their entire build system to a different operating system (and hardware). We created a virtualized image and chose a modern operating system that had a similar shared memory architecture and processor base. We then ported all of their Dynix C code base and scripts to the new system. We replaced the Informix library with a third party provider (which could provide compliant services) and then ensured that all of the accounts were cloned onto the new system. The resulting system ended up being a hybrid solution where the company entered data into the old system, that databases would be copied over at build time to the new system for processing. This way we could migrate the system very quickly. The final system could perform their builds in 90 minutes (from 6 days). An additional post process that used to take 10 days to build now completed in 15 minutes (since we were able to tweak the code to take advantage of the new system speed).
  
  
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  2010 - SCO v3 Virtualization,
  Livermore, California
  
  A system designed to take product data, manipulate into a suite of product offerings and then product a proprietary format CD/DVD and tapes for customer consumption. The system consisted of 8 PC's (Pentium 1), proprietary CD/DVD writer and many tape drives. The production process was slow, convoluted and prone to failure. It utilized an Ingres v3 database on SCO v3 operating system. Older PC's were being purchased at premium prices from the internet so that their parts could keep the system running. We were able to consolidate the 8 machines into a single virtual that we hosted onto a brand new standalone PC. The virtualization was moved to SCO v5 and we were able to migrate the codebase and Ingres license. Tape devices were accessed via the host operating system and all printing to dot matrix printers (VIA serial/parallel ports) were replaced by a system to convert the printouts to PDF files. The virtualized system was able to speed up production processes by 100x. After analyzing the CD/DVD produced by the proprietary CD/DVD writing software/hardware, we replaced it with open source writing software that was configured to produce equivalent media. All tape media was reverse engineered and recreated using simple scripts.
  
  
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  2011 - SCO v3 production system running Oracle v7,
  Austin, Texas
  
  A group of SCO v3 servers running Ingres v3 and Oracle v7 were being maintained in the data center. These systems were beginning to show signs of failure and their production schedules were taking 6+ days to complete. We virtualized each system to SCO v5 and migrated the database licenses. Once the system were operational, we virtualized their Windows data entry desktops too. Their data entry system would only run on Windows XP so by virtualizing them, they could now have upgraded desktops and do data entry through the virtual desktops. They ran a lot of reports produced on wide green-bar printers, we modified the printing system in SCO to produce PDF files and hosted them on an intranet web server. Production times on the new virtual system were reduced to 90 minutes. We eventually converted the VIrtual Images to VMWare VSphere to be deployed into the corporate virtualization servers in the data center.