Out of Scope: Tales From The Tech Project Front - ' Status Check' (
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: Project Management: Gathering Speed">
Status Check: Project Management: Gathering Speed
Asset management software helps Canada's Blue Mountain Ski Resort expand its horizons.
MIKE NANCEKIVELL is network manager at Blue Mountain Ski Resort near Collingwood, Ontario. Since resort operator Intrawest took a 50% stake in 1999, Blue Mountain has expanded into a resort-style community and expects to offer 2,000 hotel rooms by 2011.
To keep up with the growth, Nancekivell and his team invested in information-technology asset management software from Altiris, which was recently acquired by Symantec.
How big has the resort gotten so far?
Before the Intrawest investment, we had approximately 175 users, 70 personal computers
and eight servers. We truly experienced rapid growth. Currently there are 440 users, along with 1,700 seasonal employees, 450 personal computers and 52 servers.
What problems did that growth create?
Within a couple of years, we just shot through the roof, so there was a need to keep on
top of things. It made it hard to keep up with our I.T. responsibilities. [Before the new development]
there was three or four staff. They had knowledge of existing infra, but no official banner with which to track it all.
How did Altiris come into play?
We first stumbled across Altiris at a trade show. Initially it wasn't the asset management suite that we were interested in. We liked the client management suite—their suite of products
that give you patch management, license compliance, operating system deployment, etc. But once we saw the asset management suite, we knew it would benefit our company.
And what is it doing for you?
Our growth came in stages. In November or December 2001, the first building opened;
that required staff and assets. The next property
opened the following winter, and again, more staff and assets. Then another unit went up—growth, asset, employees. We track phones, printers, monitors, desktops, laptops. We are a seasonal resort, so we tend to have a high turnover rate for staff. We can keep track of who has what, and because of the turnover we can say, 'You're leaving us in a month,
so we expect to have this and that back.'
Thoughts on the Symantec acquisition?
It depends on what Symantec does with it. We´ll wait and see.
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