Logicalis

Logicalis integrates best-in-class reporting system for Kable News with a new IBM On Demand solution and knowledgeable, committed customer support.

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Established in the 1890's and headquartered in Mt. Morris, Illinois, Kable News Company, Inc. is a world-class supplier of circulation and direct marketing services to the publishing, media and direct marketing industry. With over 1,500 employees and 11 unique yet interrelated services–including newsstand distribution, magazine fulfillment and direct mail services–Kable News is now the second, largest fulfillment services provider in the U.S.

Kable News is driven by two strong commitments: to provide complete satisfaction to its customers with superior quality services of lasting value and to excel in the development of effective and innovative services. Inspired by these two overarching philosophies, Kable News recently decided to develop a robust and all-inclusive reporting system to support a wide array of business needs.

"Following our acquisition of a major competitor," stated Gordon Jones, Director of Technology, Kable News Company. "We were faced with integrating two diverse mainframe reporting systems into an environment that would provide a best-in-class reporting solution for our newly acquired and loyal current clients. The direction we selected was to develop a data warehouse using IBM's xSeries Servers as the hardware platform."

Logicalis Reports for Duty
Kable News was determined to streamline the reporting process. With the company motto 'Excellence is No Accident' in mind, Kable News knew it would only achieve their goal of improved service through a concerted effort and an intentional, thoughtful approach. It also knew they would need outside help with their infrastructure needs. For this, the company turned to Logicalis, their trusted IBM business partner of many years.

"We had been working with Kable News for roughly five years with a lot of their infrastructure requirements, such as storage, IBM iSeries, pSeries and xSeries," stated Kevin Gruneisen, IBM xSeries Brand Manager, Logicalis. "A couple of years ago they purchased the fulfillment services company from EDS, and approached us to assist in closing several business gaps identified during the acquisition phase."

Logicalis is an international provider of high-performance On Demand solutions. They are IBM Certified for On Demand Business for Solution Advisor and Solution Designer which is backed up by a customer-endorsed track record of technical excellence. Over 5,000 private companies and public institutions recognize Logicalis for its ability to deliver on its promises with advanced, high performing cost effective technology solutions.

"Kable News had been a consistent Dell account," added Gruneisen. "When they first came to us looking for a solution to help manage their new 3 Terabytes data warehouse, the Sun platform and its Opteron-based server boxes were strongly being considered. In addition to discussing our proposed solution with them at the IBM RTP Executive Briefing Center, we brought them into our IBM Business Partner Innovation Center in Chicago and took them through the IBM xSeries product line and VMware. What the executives at Kable News learned about the IBM BladeCenter and xSeries technologies during these visits, along with the capabilities of the Logicalis Integration Center to integrate, load software, burn in, and test their systems, convinced them that the IBM/Logicalis solution would provide the greatest benefits to support their new infrastructure."

With the help of Logicalis, Kable News went on to implement a full IBM On Demand Business solution, which included the IBM BladeCenter, eight xSeries 366 servers and IBM's DS4000 TotalStorage Server. Kable News initiated the process in June 2005, and within one month Logicalis had integrated the IBM solution with Kable News' mainframe systems, data staging area and SQL servers.

By All Reports, Logicalis and IBM Help Kable News Achieve Success
What may have ultimately swayed Kable News to go with IBM was its new X3 architecture and the horsepower afforded by the Intel® Xeon® processors.

"A main consideration for us was who had the best vision of where they were taking their technology," stated Jones. "At the time IBM's X3 architecture was fairly new and we wanted to learn more about it. After meeting with Logicalis and IBM's High Performance Computing Team, we were convinced that IBM's X3 architecture and the single- and dual-core Xeon processors were the way to go. By investing in 4-way Intel processor-based servers today with the ability to turn them into 8-way servers later without having to replace the entire server box greatly reduces our total cost of ownership."

The comprehensive IBM On Demand solution allowed Kable News to provide several benefits to its valued customers. With complete Web-based access, customers could view account information and query circulation and financial statistical information in real time, and the network's enhanced performance meant they could do it without delay. Such added value allowed customers to work more efficiently, save time and increase their competitive advantage.

For its part, Kable News can now store and manage its volumes of data more easily due to an increase in capacity, and improved scalability giving the company plenty of room to grow at a relatively low cost. In addition, Kable News will realize greater profitability through enhanced operational efficiencies and achieve an increase in overall revenues through enhanced customer loyalty and an increased number of new business opportunities.