Case Study: Hickman's Egg Ranch
Background
Family-owned and operated in Arizona since 1944, Hickman's Egg Ranch delivers fresh, locally-produced eggs to retailers and consumers throughout the Valley. It remains the only Arizona egg producer with chickens and a USDA-inspected processing plant. In fact, its multiple locations currently house more than 2,000,000 hens. Hickman's eggs may be purchased at AJ's, Albertson's, Bashas', Costco, Fred Meyers, Food City, Fry's, IGA, McCagnos Meats, Sam's Club, Sprouts, Sunflower, Phoenix Ranch Market, Wal-Mart and many convenience stores. To remain profitable within an extremely competitive industry, Hickman's aggressively uses its integrated computer network and industry-specific applications.
In January 2007, unsatisfied with its existing IT support provider, Hickman's sought help from Hughes-Calihan and became an e-Manage client. Hughes-Calihan conducted a thorough network assessment, including a review of Hickman's servers, workstations, network infrastructure, Internet, e-mail, applications, security, remote access and disaster recovery.
The assessment discovered that Hickman's still utilized a Windows NT server platform and an older, unsupported version of Citrix as the end users' main method of entry. In addition, Hickman's relied heavily upon a proprietary DOS application critical to the management of its egg production and distribution. Unfortunately, the previous IT support vendor insisted that the DOS application could not function within a new server operating system. At the same time, the DOS application developer could not provide a smooth upgrade path for the application.
Solution
To eliminate the costly and dangerous risks associated with employing unsupported operating systems, Hughes-Calihan strongly encouraged Hickman's to upgrade its servers to Microsoft Windows 2003 and to replace Citrix with Microsoft Terminal Services. While Hickman's agreed with the recommendations, it hesitated because of the fragile nature of its business-critical DOS application. Hughes-Calihan contacted the DOS application vendor and proposed the creation of a sophisticated test infrastructure. Leveraging its status as a Gold Certified Partner, Hughes-Calihan collaborated with Microsoft to create a Windows Server 2003 test environment to support the DOS application. Over a two month period, Hughes-Calihan worked with the application developer and Microsoft to overcome a variety of technical hurdles. With the test successful and the DOS application running smoothly on Windows Server 2003, Hughes-Calihan completed the proposed server upgrades and replaced Citrix with Terminal Services.
Conclusion
Today, Hickman's maintains a stable and reliable network. By understanding the specific requirements of Hickman's business day-to-day business, Hughes-Calihan has become not only a technology provider, but also, a trusted business advisor. As Jim Manos, Hickman's Chief Financial Officer, explains, "Our experience with Hughes-Calihan solving our IT problems has been nothing short of terrific. The major conversion away from the NT based system went without a hiccup because of their advanced planning and attentiveness. And the day to day situations that occur, although they certainly are not occurring daily, are handled quickly and to everyone's satisfaction."
