Pyramid Breweries, Inc., is one of the leading craft brewers in the rapidly expanding market for fresh, flavorful beers. It was founded in 1984 in Kalama, Washington, a small logging town in the foothills of Mount St. Helens. The company brews two brands of beer: Pyramid Ales and Thomas Kemper Lagers. Pyramid’s main brewery is now located in Seattle, Washington; the company has another brewery close to Portland, Oregon, and recently opened a $14.5 million facility in Berkeley, California. Besides strong market coverage in the western states, Pyramid Breweries’ beer is distributed across the United States. The company sought a high-performance dial-up solution that would enable it to quickly, easily, and cost-effectively deploy its integrated accounting application to regional breweries yet maintain centralized administration.
Pyramid Breweries recently embarked on an expansion strategy, building breweries in major metropolitan areas across the United States. A thin-client/server solution that employed WinFrame complemented this strategic expansion by helping the company deploy mission-critical applications to new and emerging brewery sites efficiently and economically.
Presenting problem Pyramid Breweries’ rapid expansion strategy presented a complex set of challenges: How was the company to both manage growth and maintain tight control of its corporate computing environment? An added complication was the fact that the IS “department” consisted of just one person, the IS director, who had to support more than 350 employees and a growing base of regional microbreweries.
The challenge: Manage growth and maintain tight control of the computing environment.
The IS director sought a thin-client/server solution that would centralize application execution and consolidate mission-critical information at headquarters while providing remote users with high-performance access over low-bandwidth modem connections. In the midst of tremendous growth, Pyramid needed an efficient way to deploy its data-intensive integrated accounting application, named Speed, to regional microbreweries. Consolidating information and applications was critical in order to avoid duplication of efforts and to ensure the security of sensitive corporate data.
Prior to using WinFrame, Pyramid Breweries had tried using single-user remote-control software but had not been satisfied with the results.
Hardware and software The Pyramid Breweries thin-client/server networking environment includes a Compaq ProSignia 500 P5 150 with 64 MB of RAM and a 1-GB hard drive.
Pyramid Breweries deploys its accounting application to regional sites and to its sales force.
Pyramid Breweries used WinFrame to deploy Speed to its regional microbreweries and to its mobile sales force over low-bandwidth modem connections.
Solution and results The strategic implementation of a thin-client/server solution has allowed Pyramid’s remote breweries throughout the United States to simultaneously access one consolidated accounting database. Pyramid can now gather and analyze its finances more efficiently and more accurately. Implementing Win- Frame has also significantly reduced system administration and maintenance for each brewery location, since users now have a single, consolidated base of financial information, centrally located and managed at headquarters.
Employees can now dial in from other breweries to access and update centralized shipment, inventory, and order information. Pyramid’s sales force and external consultants can also dial in to headquarters to access other mission-critical applications.
In addition to the successful deployment of Speed, Pyramid Breweries’ mobile sales force enjoys dial-in access to e-mail from home or when on the road. External consultants can also dial in to update and refer to information they need on Microsoft Access databases.
WinFrame’s single-point application management is also reducing Pyramid Breweries’ cost of application ownership, since all application additions, updates, user configuration, and support occur centrally from the WinFrame application server.
Remote training and support tools helped the IS department solve problems from a central location.
As with Honeywell, the Pyramid staff takes advantage of the remote training and support tools that come with WinFrame, including the shadowing feature that allows the monitoring of remote users. The remote support tools also allow the IS director to spend less time troubleshooting and traveling to remote sites and to devote more time to planning and rapidly implementing solutions.
Pyramid Breweries extended the reach of its existing applications to Web users.
Pyramid Breweries is already exploring other enterprise application deployment possibilities. The company plans to deploy corporate applications to Web users through a Web-based thin-client/server scenario. This particular implementation takes advantage of WinFrame’s application launching and embedding (ALE) capabilities. ALE allows existing Windows, client/server, or legacy applications to be embedded in HTML Web pages and viewed from a Web browser. WinFrame’s Windows ALE capabilities enable companies to extend existing Windows applications to the Web environment without having to rewrite any applica-tion code.