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The reports in an IWMS system are mostly used to make strategic decisions. Utilization of space is one of the more common reasons to invest in an IWMS.
When I was helping a tech company sell their real estate to another company they told me that the numbers the IWMS system was producing did not line up with the numbers that the real estate company was producing. They told me that I had a couple of hours to figure out why. I found out the real estate company had excluded the vertical penetration of the building. I stayed late and walked all eight buildings with the real estate representative and proved all of my numbers. This resulted in a $30 million increase of the sale of the buildings. This made my job worth the work.
So who are the people that are going to read these reports and learn from them? There are four basic audiences that I break it down into.
1) V AND C LEVEL
These are CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and all other chief executives and vice presidents. This group is looking for summarized data sheets packed full of numbers that will help them make strategic decisions. They are looking for anomalies so they can dig down and ask questions and figure out why the anomaly exists.
2) MANAGERS/DIRECTORS
These people help to drive and accomplish the decisions made by the chief executives and vice presidents. The reports that are tailored for this level are similar to the V and C level, but are more detailed. This allows them to get to the depths of an anomaly and make decisions.
3) INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR
This level manages the raw data that provides the analysis for the company. They need very granulated reports that allow them to input and modify data for the two previous levels.
4) STAFF AT LARGE
The data for this level has basic information like locations of conference rooms, how to submit a work request, how to change the temperature, where are the hotel spaces in every building, etc. These reports allow all staff to search the IWMS system and then schedule or request what they need.
IWMS reporting at all four of these levels makes for a very strong system. The reports used and produced by the IWMS system justify the expense of the system. While they are not the most expensive systems that exist, they are not the least expensive, either. Sometimes these systems are reduced or removed in order to save money for the company. Without the reports produced directly form the IWMS system, it can take longer to see that there actually are results coming from using the IWMS.
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RSC Server Hosting Environment Upgrade
At RSC we have recently upgraded our development, support and hosting environments. Working closely with Hostway, our solutions provider, we have moved to a more robust, high performance, server, storage and network architecture. This change introduces the following improvements to our environments:
- High-Performance Storage – Our new environment runs on intelligent, shared storage technology. It keeps frequently-used data on very fast Solid State Disks (SSD), and data that is used less frequently on more traditional (but still high performance) magnetic disk drives. As the data usage patterns of our applications change, our storage adapts by moving newly-relevant data up to SSD storage. This setup gives us much quicker access to the data we need. The redundant nature of the hardware the data is stored on also ensures that the integrity of that data is very well protected.
- Network Security – Our new environment uses industry-leading 5nine Software Cloud Security to keep RSC and our users’ data protected.
- VM Failover – In the event the physical server one of our Virtual Machines is hosted on fails, a standby dedicated physical server will start, taking over hosting duties for the Virtual Machines. Our server hardware was redundant before; no single component failure could take our servers offline. Now even the servers are redundant; even if the whole server fails, our VMs will start right back up!
- Easy VM Setup – Bringing up a new Virtual Machine, including a whole now ARCHIBUS instance and associated applications including SpaceView, now takes just a few clicks.
We are proud of the result: A high-performance, well protected, easy to use environment we are proud to call our new virtual home. We are confident this new environment will be a secure and responsive environment for our hosted customers, as well.
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