CSS Laboratories Provides Over a Decade of Server Design and Integration for largest Cheese Manufacture and Distributor in US
For more than 15 years, CSS Laboratories has worked hand-in-hand with a major cheese-making company to help the food distributor create an efficient and cost-effective infrastructure that continues to grow with the business as it steadily gains customers, increases capacity and continues to be the largest such manufacturer in the cheese industry.
GROWING WITH THE CUSTOMER
CSS Laboratories is a privately held global manufacturer and supplier of desktop and server solutions, rackmount computers, custom design and development services, and integration services.
In 1997, CSS Laboratories began a relationship with a northwestern cheese manufacturing and distribution company by creating a two-server system that was durable enough to run the entire company – from manufacturing to accounting – for 5 years. So dependable was the system that the company’s need for an upgrade didn’t occur until the introduction of the Internet “Super Highway” in the late-’90s. The manufacturer again called upon CSS Laboratories to create three customized 410 Dual Xeon servers to accommodate the company’s desire to enter the world of e-commerce.
In 2001, the manufacturer’s client base drastically expanded when they took on a leading warehouse retail chain, and their need for increased capacity, both in-house and online, was met with yet another custom-built Xeon server by CSS Laboratories.
With the addition of these new servers, not only was the company able to boost their customer service and increase sales online, they were also able to enhance the speed and efficiency of their operations. CSS updated the two 1997 servers, and they were reassigned to the factory floor to manage production operations, such as packaging and labeling. These original servers, upgraded with Pentium IV motherboards, continue to operate 24-7 with horsepower available for future upgrades.
In 2004, CSS Laboratories created a Citrix server designed to cater to the company’s expansion of inventory control, Web-based order processing and other manufacturing needs. With the high reliability, easy maintenance and flexible upgrades of the 4- to 20- slot passive backplanes CSS Laboratories provides in its custom-built hardware, the new server’s 3.6 GHz Dual Xeon capabilities also include RAID backup as well as a combination of hard-wire and wireless peripheral data control.
When the cheese manufacturer decided to expand these server capabilities, they found that the specifications they had in mind were not available from the usual, large-volume suppliers, who proffered a “take it or leave it” approach to sales of their off-the-shelf servers. By working with CSS Laboratories, the cheese company found that a customized solution is not prohibitively expensive, and the individualized attention results in very specific solutions to the needs of the company. CSS Laboratories’ dexterity was proven both by its ability to engineer quality servers to the specifications particular to the cheese manufacturer’s needs and accommodate future growth without the investment in entirely new equipment.
