Robt. Stone & Co. Ltd is one of New Zealand's largest and most experienced mechanical engineering companies specialising in project management, mechanical design, fabrication, site construction and maintenance.  Since 1948, Robt Stone has operated throughout New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands and South East Asia with an outstanding reputation for safety, technical accomplishment and integrity.

“Microsoft Exchange Server has brought us savings in time and stress through staff being able to take advantage of its information sharing capabilities.” - Blaise Sinko Financial Manager

Robt Stone were running a peer to peer network in each of their two main offices, Auckland and New Plymouth.  Financials were on an old, unreliable Unix server, and linked to some of their numerous branch offices over an old asynchronous serial network based on Telecom DDS circuits.  PCs were typically old, files were stored around the network on various hard drives and managed totally decentrally.  Backups and antivirus relied on the individual network users.

For a professional engineering company of such a profile, operating a network this way was no longer appropriate, so they approached Kinetics.  Financial Manager Blaise Sinko says  “We recognised the need to install a new network and associated hardware without disrupting daily operations.”

Kinetics helped Robt Stone to assess their needs and to build a shopping list within their budget to provide the best value solution.  A project plan was prepared to ensure the implementation could go ahead with minimal disruption to the business.  The Unix solution was migrated to Windows 2000, and new servers implemented. Sinko says, “Microsoft Exchange Server has brought us savings in time and stress through staff being able to take advantage of its information sharing capabilities.”  A number of new Windows XP workstations were deployed, however the Kinetics also had to cater for legacy Windows 98 workstations that remained on the network.

The DDS WAN was replaced with Telecom Private Office and now links all the branch offices, not just with financials, but also email, Internet and file access.  Key staff now have remote access to the office from their homes. Sinko says, “Our old WAN infrastructure utilised old technology that was almost redundant and no longer fully supported. With the implementation of the new Telecom IP,Office WAN, our productivity has improved. Now all our team can utiliise our computing investment, regardless of where they are.”  Antivirus and Backups are now run centrally.  Some 30 new PCs using Windows XP replaced 5 year old machines that were starting to fail.  Central management provides assurance that best computing practices are being followed, and Kinetics proactively maintain the network to keep it that way.

Installation of all of this was done in just 10 days, timed to fit around month-end processing. Onsite installation took just 2 days.  Actual downtime was minimal, limited merely to file transfers.  Kinetics managed to cover the main offices in Auckland and New Plymouth, and branches in Whangarei, Hawera and Invercargill on time, on schedule and on budget.  Where necessary, extra resource was brought to bear to deal with unexpected issues, to ensure that the changeover happened quickly and efficiently, despite the monumental upgrades being undertaken.

So, in just ten days, Robt Stone jumped forward ten years in I.T. systems. Since the upgrade, Robt Stone have grown significantly.  The platform Kinetics built has allowed growth, with new sites being added over time.  The decisions and design have proven themselves!  More exciting projects are planned to further develop the platform to ensure that the best engineering practice has the best resources to enable them to do the best job.

For your next I.T. project, call the people who can make it happen ontime, on schedule, on budget, as you expect it!  Kinetics Group, making I.T. work for you.