Fort Collins Coloradoan have been providing news and advertising in Fort Collins Colorado for over 100 years. Fort Collins Coloradoan has 250 employees to support with around 300 machines spread across multiple networks including satellite and WAN/VPN connections.

Coloradoan needed a tool to track hardware and software as well as any incidents or activity related to these assets, across the various networks that they managed. They also needed a way of reporting the status of their operations to senior staff such as the CEO, CFO, CIO, Presidents and Directors. Their primary goals in implementing Microforge.net ENT Server were to :

1. Improve efficiency of their IT department and,
2. Gather/maintain key information that would allow them to generate budgets for labor, hardware and software.

Jason Urban, a Systems Administrator at Fort Collins Coloradoan, had already used ENT Server in the previous position that he held for a worldwide security software development company – so he was already familiar with capabilities of the software and the standard of support that they could expect from Microforge.net before purchasing ENT Server: “I have now implemented Microforge ENT server software for 2 different employers who had 2 different network topologies and it has worked great in both cases. From a world wide security software development, sales, and testing business to a local news paper publication business - both with multiple networks - Microforge has proven to be a great affordable solution.”

Jason’s team were quickly able to establish a central IT Helpdesk to track both support calls that end users raised with the helpdesk via email as well as those that technicians entered into the system manually, with automatic notifications being sent from the software to both end users and technicians for key events such as when helpcalls are [re]assigned or when the status of a helpcall changes. Describing the helpdesk capabilities of the software, Jason stated, “ The web based functionality is great for access from any computer, without the need for client software, and the online Knowledge base is an excellent way to store and share information online.”

They were able to generate a complete inventory of all the systems that they managed without needing to deploy any software on the remote machines across the various separate networks of Fort Collins Coloradoan. “Automated WMI software and hardware inventory scans can be scheduled to run on all Windows based machines. Any other inventory can be easily added manually to the database,” says Mr. Urban.

Finally, using the reports that ship with ENT Server in conjunction with the custom report building capabilities of Enterprise Server, Jason’s team were able to generate the reports they needed for use by their team and senior management. “The software Inventory is a very useful feature to automate the inventory of installed software on every machine,” Jason says, “…reports can be easily [run] at any time to verify compliance.”

When asked why they selected Microforge.net ENT Server over competing products such as Microsoft SMS, TrackIT, GASP and Network Inventory Monitor, Mr. Urban indicated the response times and quality of support that he'd received from Microforge.net. He also said, “A lot of the other asset management applications out there have different features like software deployment or calendar or something else to offer but Microforge offered the most needed features for the best price and they offered free support and updates for life!!!”

You can find further information about Fort Collins Coloradoan at www.coloradoan.com.