civiL distriButed enterprise
Projects using Bentley data and document management technology to support
work sharing and project management. These projects recognize measurable benefits
achieved through improved project quality, process enhancement, decreased costs,
time savings, error avoidance, or risk reduction.
Centralized Data Storage Using Project Wise StartPoint and Riverbed WAN Optimization the Banks group WINNER
The Banks Group needed real-time access to
design and office documents at many locations.
This was achieved in the past by using remote
copy procedures or a complicated setup of
distributed file systems and WAN infrastructure.
But this approach suffered from file locking,
versioning problems, and speed of access.
The goal of this project was to implement a
solution that would allow easy, auditable, and
fast access to centralized design data from
any location.
The firm settled on a combination of document
management software and WAN optimization
hardware. The WAN device manages network
traffic by eliminating redundant data and streamlining data transfer. It also performs bit-level
caching of data, which means that only changes
to a file are sent back to the data store.
Among the immediate benefits was a reduction in
backup procedures and costs. The company now
has one central data store instead of seven separate
ones. Superfluous SANs were reassigned to storing
CAD and office documents, and the company no
longer requires tape backup procedures at remote
sites. Costs for offsite replication of server data
for disaster recovery have also been reduced
because replication is now done from a single site.
The IT department also noted a dramatic drop in
the number of data restores requested, a decrease
it attributes to the versioning capabilities of the
document management software. Problems with
missing referenced drawings have also been
eliminated.
A solution based on Project Wise StartPoint is now
used at all five U. K. offices, three working sites,
and via the extranet, which is accessed by consultants who can submit data directly into Project Wise
StartPoint. With all documents being stored in
the project portal, team members can go to one
place and search on both document name and
content. Users say they are saving at least 200
man-hours a week from not having to search for
documents.
