Atria Networks

December 22, 2009

PROMINENT CANADA ADOPTS ATRIA NETWORKS HIGH-SPEED INTERNET SERVICE FOR FAST, RELIABLE, MISSION-CRITICAL ACCOUNT SUPPORT

GUELPH, ON – ProMinent Canada, the Canadian division of Prominent Fluid Controls, world leader in Water Treatment and Chemical Feed solutions, has implemented Atria Network’s fibre Internet service to provide rock solid customer account support from its two Canadian offices, in Guelph, ON and Laval, PQ.

ProMinent Canada is part of the global ProMinent Worldwide enterprise, which provides unrivaled technical solutions in Water Treatment and Chemical Feed applications for public water treatment, aquatic sports and recreation facilities, engineering and plant construction, pulp and paper, and chemical and petrochemical industries.

According to Philip Thomson, I.T. Supervisor with ProMinent Fluid Controls Limited’s Canadian office in Guelph, ProMinent Canada switched to Atria Networks to provide the fast and reliable service demanded by its Canadian customers.

In particular, ProMinent’s Laval, PQ office was finding that its existing Internet service provider was failing to address chronic reliability problems, which were seriously interfering with the speed and quality of ProMinent Canada’s customer support.

“By May 2009, we realized we were having major ongoing issues with our existing network service provider,” says Thomson. The existing network service was so unreliable that ProMinent staff could not handle customer service calls in real time, because of constant network disconnections.

Staff were finding that their existing service was constantly dropping connections, and losing network service in the middle of reviewing account files, forcing them to manually take notes of the customer problem, and either send a fax or make a callback after the network had been brought back up and the files consulted, rather than giving a fast, convenient, single-call solution to the customer problem or query.

The Company’s existing service provider could not explain why the constant loss of network connection was crippling the usability of the network. Thomson said it was impossible to contact a responsible manager promptly at the service provider, and lower level technical support could neither identify nor solve the reliability issues.

According to Thomson, a couple of industry colleagues recommended Atria, and Thomson contacted the company. Said Thomson, “We explained our problem and needs and once Atria saw how we did things, they offered a transparent LAN service, which is definitely the way to go.”

ProMinent didn’t even need the maximum bandwidth that Atria provides, since the size of the files being transferred was not the problem. Reliability of service was and is the first consideration for providing fast customer technical support and information.

Since switching to Atria Networks, according to Thomson, “Service is stable and reliable.”

The new service also helped with ProMinent Canada’s communications with its US based head office. “Reliability is the key,” said Thomson, “We didn’t budget for the problems we had with the earlier telco service.”

According to Thomson, the move of both offices to the Atria services was smooth. There was some time required for a site survey to arrange the extension of the high speed fibre connection into the Guelph office building, and ProMinent Canada paid ‘next to nothing for a full crew to tunnel the fibre connection into the building.

“Once the fibre was in, provisioning of the network was very quick, with only minor issues: we wanted 6 IP addresses rather than one, which took a couple of hours… the TLS phone setup was longer, since we had to rely on the telco provider in Laval.”

The results, according to Thomson, have all been positive: “In Guelph, dropped connections originating from here have stopped… any that occur are due to some factor in the US or elsewhere.”

“For the Laval office, there’s been a huge increase in usability.” Previously, when connected over the old VPN, voice calls would frequently be dropped. Utilizing SAP with the previous service, staff would need at least twenty minutes to enter an order, and often times the connection would be dropped, the info lost, and more time would have to be spent reconnecting and re-entering the lost work.”

“Now, we have two connections, no dropped calls, no (distorted) Darth Vader voices, no lost order entries. Everything is clear and reliable,” he added.

The network connection has allowed the Canadian offices to shave costs buy reducing the number of dedicated business lines, replacing them with IP phones almost exclusively. Listing the specific benefits, Thomson cites increased effective network speed (due to reliability), elimination of packet loss, and a huge improvement in uptime, efficiency, and employee and customer satisfaction.

Ironically, says Thomson, ProMinent Canada actually bought one of the slower Atria packages, but a graph that shows the difference between Atria and the previous provider shows much improved performance, even at the lower cost option.

Thomson believes that what Atria brings to the enterprise table is access to improved networking infrastructure across much of urban central Canada. World leading high speed fibre is a key enabler in attracting business investment, improving competitiveness in the world market, and streamlining trade and business interactions.

“From our perspective, I think the benefits offered by Atria apply to many other companies out there. A fast, stable connection to our customers helps keep them customers, and helps us win new business,” Thomson added.

“Almost every company today needs reliable Internet service, and fibre is the best option,” he said.

Thomson regards reliable broadband service as a basic condition of doing business today. “Read the white papers on broadband,” he says. Asked whether Atria’s high-speed fibre service is a benefit to Canada as a place to invest and do business, Thomson is unequivocal: “Absolutely.”

"The Island of Downtime is
never experienced by Atria
customers. I wonder if they
miss it?"
- Aristotle Ponder, IT guru

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