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Please select a link to read Customer Testimonials or to read some news stories about Atria clients. "Dare Foods contracts with Atria Networks for networking and disaster recovery solutions. We achieve the fastest possible connection with the area's most secure back-up and recovery site."
• Fusion Homes leverages Atria's service into award winning satisfaction FUSION HOMES LEVERAGES ATRIA NETWORKS SERVICE INTO AWARD WINNING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, RELIABILITY, AND “GREEN” BUSINESS PRACTICES Guelph, Ontario-based Fusion Homes, credits Kitchener-based Atria Networks with providing it with industry leading network technology to help give it an edge in productivity and client service. Fusion homes has been in business for over 10 years, beginning as a paper and fax-based company. Its original early, remote network servers had a history of being unreliable. “Our General Managers would arrive at the office at 5:30 a.m. only to find they could not work, because the server was down and support was unavailable,” says Lee Piccoli, President of Fusion Homes. Fusion Homes received many favorable referrals to Atria Networks via word of mouth from IT experts, said Piccoli. Fusion Homes contacted Atria, and laid out its priorities:
“Now, we are able to access real time data across all the offices. The easier it is for us to transfer information, the better we can serve our clients,” he said. “The main needs of our network have been identified as increased reliability, and the ability to handle expansion of our business. That means our network system needs to grow with us. As a result of Atria Networks’ reliability and speed, all Fusion Homes departments have benefited from less downtime, quicker connection speeds, and unified communication. Fusion Homes is very happy with our investment in Atria networks. The service is excellent, and we appreciate having a team that is willing and eager to arm us with the Telecom solutions we need,” said Piccoli. Part of Fusion Homes’ brand identity is its focus on environmentally-sound business practices and home designs. “We build energy-efficient homes, and as a business are taking steps to reduce our ecological footprint. We are always looking for way to reduce paper consumption and travel costs, and the inter-office applications we have been able to utilize over our Atria supplied network has helped us to reduce these cost, enabling the smallest carbon footprint achievable. Piccoli said, “We recently introduced a more powerful server to address consistency and expansion issues. In addition, corporate Blackberries have been unified on the server allowing for wireless synchronization. Our networking system is now more reliable than ever before.” In terms of Fusion Homes’ bottom line, Atria Networks has become a part of the company’s business model. “Our investments into their solutions touch all aspects of our business,” he added Fusion Homes is continuing to work with Atria Networks to implement upgrades to the company’s network, to help them remain an industry leader. In 2008, Fusion won the prestigious 2008 Ontario Builder of the Year Award, and rated #1 in Customer Satisfaction at the homebuilding industry’s Tarion Awards of Excellence. The proof is in the happiness of Fusion Homes’ customers. “Our customer satisfaction ratings are higher than ever. All our investments in our internal network system are implemented with our customer service top-of-mind,” said Piccoli. Looking ahead, Fusion Homes will continue to roll out its strategy of continuous improvements. “We are implementing software that will fully integrate all departments company wide. This type of undertaking will be entirely dependent on a solid, high-speed network. We will also be adding servers in offices that currently use remote access. This will give remote users better access to information and will also provide backup and data recovery if necessary.” “Going forward, Fusion Homes will continue to be a leading builder in Ontario, and beyond. In addition to building homes, we will be developing on our own land. In order to achieve our goals, we will require an extensive network to manage massive amounts of scheduling and other information.” “It’s so important to have a solid foundation in order to build a business model that works. Atria Networks is providing us with that foundation. As our needs for IT and network solutions grow, we expect Atria to continuously improve on a great service, so that we will be able to keep up with our expansion needs, and keep Fusion Homes one step ahead of the competitive curve,” said Piccoli. OTTAWA-CARLETON DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD RELIES ON ATRIA NETWORKS TO OFFER STUDENTS AND TEACHERS UNFETTERED, PERVASIVE CONNECTIVITY AND COLLABORATION… OTTAWA - According to David Miller, Manager of the Business and Learning Technologies Department of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, the current generation of Canadian students brings an unprecedented familiarity with, and demand for, collaborative online learning into school, rather than having to be taught “how to use computers” in the traditional way. Over the past six years, in partnership with its current network service provider Atria Networks (and former provider Telecom Ottawa Limited, which was acquired by Atria Networks LP in 2008), the Ottawa-Carleton School Board has become a national leader in bringing the educational and administrative benefits of high speed networking to students and teachers alike. “Students still think we’re behind the times, and perhaps in their view we are,” says Miller. “They want unfettered network access to everything and everyone, no filters, no restrictions. We channel students to use appropriate tools, and we listen to kids’ opinions, and teachers’ opinions. The goal is to provide a growing network that lets everyone just go into class, log on and GO!” Whether in class or at home, students want to work on a peer to peer basis, the same as it will be for them at university, college, and moving forward, the office. Not all workplaces allow unrestricted access for collaboration yet, but more are moving in that direction as they recognize the advantages gained. “New technology and collaboration are huge parts of students’ lives today. They work on projects as groups” said Miller, “They work as packs in class, just in the same way kids are using the Internet outside of school.” “In the old days,” Miller said, “We taught computer skills. Now, typically, most kids know more about computers than we do. Kids are on Web 2.0 tools, we never have to teach texting, using Facebook, or how to search online. If we incorporate what most kids already know about network use into the classroom, half of the work is done.” “But teachers still have to steer students in certain ways to support the goals of education. The hope is that when students leave secondary school they’ll have more than just tech skills, they will have “learned how to learn”, to cooperate, to create, and to adapt, to fit their abilities successfully into business, post secondary learning, and life skills.” Miller’s perspective comes from over 30 years experience with the School Board, including five as the head of his department. “We have a staff of 92 in the department and we love our work.” According to Miller, the Business and Learning Technologies Department is responsible for data and electronic communications in the school board. Specifically, this includes classroom computers, all networks and Internet services, business systems, telecommunications, student record data including report cards, transcripts, and assessment data warehousing. Miller’s team also provides technology integration consulting services to classroom teachers, and a host of support services for school and administrative staff, for everything from repairs to system support. The School Board’s drive to remain on the absolute leading edge of collaborative network technology in education dates to 2002, Miller said. “At that time, Telecom Ottawa (acquired by Atria Networks in May 2008) came out with its program to hook up every school in the Ottawa area to high speed network service: four school boards, plus universities and colleges. Telecom Ottawa offered an attractively low cost, long term contract, running gigabyte fibre to each building.” The network service provider came to the table with a proposal offering ultra high speed, Layer 2 switching, easy management and less complex, super-aggregated V-LAN support. At the time, this was all new to Miller. The price was very attractive, so much so that it at first seemed a lowball offer. Bell’s quote to provide the same capacity and feature set was at a two to three times the cost per site, with slower speed. Says Miller, “Telecom Ottawa provided a very good price, and we went with them.” The high-speed network was installed for the municipal offices of the City of Ottawa, then both Catholic school boards, and then came the Public Board. “Once we signed up for the new service, Telecom Ottawa went ahead with the build. It took five months, start to finish, extraordinarily fast, and withsuperb reliability. There was maybe three outages in five years, um, including one self-induced by us,” he said. Telecom Ottawa was then acquired by Atria Networks. “Last spring, I heard about it through the media, and then they phoned and told us. I initially had concerns about the original contract, since it was such a bargain for us. But it was not an issue in any case,” says Miller. “Atria Networks honored the terms of the existing contract as part of its acquisition. I was also worried about the excellent folks at Telecom Ottawa, whether they’d keep their jobs under Atria Network’s management,” Miller says. “They’re all still there, except if they were promoted or are working elsewhere in Atria’s operations.” The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s network in 2009 is not as unique as it was in 2002, but it lets all the schools in the system run pretty much anything application they want down the fibre-optic network, from any site to any other. The bandwidth lets teachers and students do whatever they need. With fast servers, video conferencing capabilities, etc., the luxury of high bandwidth allows just about any application to run over Atria’s Network. For Miller’s department, the Internet boom has never went bust; it has just kept getting better and more useful. The hype around the Net is gone, but functionality has increased. Web 2.0 technologies now provide centralized services to teachers. They use the network to do report cards and make them available on line. Every teacher has his or her own PC. Attendance is kept online and streaming videos are available online for teaching. “No more pushing big TV sets around on a caddy,” says Miller. Online learning, ‘off campus’ is now closer to reality. There’s a desire to support students from kindergarten to grade 12. And all of this has only become possible by the availability of economical high-speed networking. Miller’s Department invests lots of energy to help teachers to use technology to improve teacher assessment of student progress, and to help the student. They call it MISA (Managing Information Student Achievement), recording observational data on a kid for the teacher to view and use. The Board is saving money on costs of operations and equipment, but the main benefit is an increase in functionality, for both learning and administration. The Board’s bandwidth needs are increasing exponentially. Miller can see the system potentially running out on network capacity even on gigabit fibre. But in the near term, the next thing for him is to build a wireless network to allow full mobility for students with laptops and other mobile devices. The Board has a three-year plan for wireless, aiming at installing 1/3 of the network per year if budget permits. The Board intends to get rid of desktop PCs, and phase in all mobile computing devices. All senior Board staff members are to be on mobile encrypted laptops and Blackberries, followed next by all teachers, and then all students. The whole mobile computing program will take five years. "To the extent that budget is available, it may actually take from three to five years,” adds Miller. “We’ll get saving from not having to do more wiring in the schools. All the computing will be done on laptop computers, or very inexpensive netbooks, or iPhones, or even iPods. The iPod touch is almost like a computer now for some applications.” "There’s never enough budget to instantly satisfy the growing demand. “Students always think we’re behind the times. We try to use students’ and teachers’ input to choose appropriate tools for the future. We’re glad to see kids adopting these tools, and coming out confident and well educated,” he said. IT does not lead education, says Miller, but rather supports students, teachers and administrators. Academic achievement results across the Board are going up, and schools are retaining kids in class faster than they are losing them. “We’re not perfect,” admits Miller, “but the networking technology Atria has provided is playing a positive role. Today, the Internet is a way of connecting and collaborating. It’s just a learning medium, where you can use a variety of appliances like laptops and desktops and handhelds, and work more effectively with other people.” |
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