Conference netcad::hub_mgnt

583.0. "Need help with Product/solution selection" by SWAM2::JACOMB_SC (I know enough to be dangerous!!) Thu Dec 23 1993 18:05

                  I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M

                                        Date:     22-Dec-1993 05:13pm PST
                                        From:     TIM CALKINS @LAO
                                                  CALKINS.TIM AT DELREYA1 at DOHENY at TUS
                                        Dept:     NETWORK INTEGRATION
                                        Tel No:   DTN 531-4478 (310)417-4478

TO:  Scott Jacomb @LAO

CC:  Rick Wagner @CWO
CC:  Mike Cron @CWO

Subject: Solution Assistance Request                                 

We have a Digital customer/reseller who has asked us to provide a product 
and services solution for the transmission portion of their planned high 
speed fax product.  

The customer is Autologic in Thousand Oaks.  Autologic sells to the 
publishing industry.  The customer problem that Autologic is trying to 
solve is the transmission of camera ready newspaper (or magazine) paste-up 
to the remote printing facility(s).

The difficulty is that the scanned image is a very large file that can take 
about one to three hours to transmit over a T1 circuit.  In many cases, the 
transmission facility (T1 circuit) would remain dormant for most of each 
day, until the paste-up transmission is ready.  In some cases, the 
transmission facility already exists and no Digital solution is required. 

At the production end, their product consists of:

      o	 A PC with compression and other software
      o	 An attached scanner
      o	 WAN Transmission device(s)

At the printing plant(s), their product consists of:

      o	 The reciprocal WAN transmission equipment
      o	 A PC with software and an Ethernet connection on the plant network

Autologic expects to sell about 100 of these solutions per year.  This is a 
good opportunity.

Autologic has asked for a number (3-5) of cookie cutter solutions to 
include in their portfolio, i.e., some of their customers may only have one 
printing plant, others may have 2-6 plants, while some may have 7-20+.

The solution should be low cost, as we have competition from Wellfleet and 
Cisco.  Reliability and serviceability are key features.  Autologic will 
chose Digital, if the solution/price is comparable.

The ideal small end transmission solution (one production facility to one 
printing plant) that Autologic desires is an EISA synch board that has NT 
drivers and routes IP.

The higher end solutions (one production facility to many printing plants) 
would need the capacity to transmit to about 20 printing plants 
simultaneously.

My contacts at Cisco tell me that they are joint developing with Microsoft 
an EISA board with NT drivers that routes IP.  We have the capability of 
including this in our offering, if our low end solution is cost 
prohibitive.

Please help us craft a solution that will allow Autologic and Digital to 
win.  This opportunity is time sensitive, as they want to make a decision 
in early January.

Best Regards,

    Is the T1 line the most expensive part of the operation, i.e. they are
    not using it for anything else, if so how about trying a Stratacom IPX8
    box, and using it for all their voice connections to the remote
    plants as well as their data transfer when required. Using frame relay
    they could possibly even sell time to other users in the local area.
    
    Cheers
    
    Richard

    .1� Is the T1 line the most expensive part of the operation, i.e. they are
    .1� not using it for anything else, if so how about trying a Stratacom IPX8
    
    or a TransLAN3x0 at each end of the link ?