Success Story

Tropitone Furniture For Tropitone, keeping pace with rapid growth Tropitone Furniture at a glance: Casual furniture manufacturer requires a flexible and reliable platform. ® Industry: Open Enterprise and SUSE® Enterprise Manufacturing Server have helped the company consolidate Location: servers by 50 percent and maintain consistent United States Solutions: uptime, while Novell ZENworks® has centralized Novell desktop management for a small IT team. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Novell ZENworks Novell ZENworks Asset Management Overview Solution Novell GroupWise Founded in 1954, Tropitone is based in Irvine, Tropitone Furniture worked with Novacoast,

SM Results: California, and is recognized throughout the a Novell Platinum Partner , to select a com- – Consolidated servers by 50 percent casual furniture marketplace for its design prehensive Novell solution consisting of with virtualization leadership as well as its commitment to Novell Open Enterprise Server, SUSE Linux – Reduced costs with open service and value. The company sells its Enterprise Server, Novell ZENworks and source applications products to retailers, designers and the Novell GroupWise®. – Centralized desktop management to hospitality trade under the Tropitone* and reduce administrative and travel costs Basta Sole* trademarks. “With Novell, we get a lot of products and services under one big umbrella and don’t Challenge have to go looking for all the different pieces “With Novell, we get a lot of A privately held organization, Tropitone needed to manage our infrastructure,” said products and services under Furniture is seeing enormous growth with Walt Cornelison, Director of Information one big umbrella and don’t have sales volume more than doubling in the Technology for Tropitone Furniture. “Novell to go looking for all the different past few years. The company’s small IT solutions are tailored for a business of our pieces needed to manage staff was challenged to add more servers size and we see a lot more flexibility and our infrastructure.” to handle such growth, and was having to opportunity with Linux.” reboot its production servers at least once Walt Cornelison a week. Creating a reliable infrastructure Tropitone deployed Novell Open Enterprise Director of Information Technology to support rapid growth became a critical Server running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Tropitone Furniture business priority. on IBM* System x* machines. With SUSE Linux Enterprise, Tropitone has a stable and The company also wanted to streamline reliable platform to manage increasing sales desktop management. Managing work- volumes and no longer has to regularly stations had been a manual and time- reboot its servers. consuming process as the small IT team had to visit individual workstations to “With Novell’s flexible licensing, we can deploy deliver patches and upgrades. more servers without onerous and expensive upgrade processes,” said Cornelison. “We like the direction Novell is taking with Linux “Novell ZENworks gives us the option to distribute applications and patches all at once, or in phases. We have been able to complete upgrades, such as XP, without any user disruption.”

Walt Cornelison Director of Information Technology Tropitone Furniture www.novell.com

and see the industry moving that way too. Tropitone also uses Novell GroupWise It was an opportune moment to make which requires little administration time. the change.” With GroupWise WebAccess, traveling Contact your local Novell users have secure remote access to e-mail Solutions Provider, or call Tropitone currently uses a variety of open without their . Novell at: source applications including SAMBA to 1 800 714 3400 U.S./Canada manage its Windows* domains, and Nagios “We cannot afford a day of downtime and 1 801 861 1349 Worldwide and Groundwork to monitor network traffick- rely on Novell to provide a reliable backbone 1 801 861 8473 Facsimile ing. The company also uses VMware* for to support our fast-growing business,” said server virtualization. Cornelison. “We could not have done it For More Information: To read more customer without a partner like Novacoast. Our previous success stories, visit: “With Novell, we can build virtualized servers partner could not provide the support we www.novell.com/success across our enterprise, without the need for a needed—moving to Novacoast was the large staff of network administrators,” said best decision we made.” Novell, Inc. Cornelison. “We also now have an open 404 Wyman Street enterprise so we can find best-of-breed prod- Results Waltham, MA 02451 USA ucts to fit our business, rather than being By moving to Novell Open Enterprise Server forced to use a single software supplier.” and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Tropitone Furniture has a much more stable and man- To centralize desktop management, Tropitone ageable environment and has consolidated selected Novell ZENworks. The IT staff can its servers by 50 percent. The IT staff no now distribute applications and updates to longer needs to add more servers to keep all its workstations in a matter of minutes, pace with the company’s growth and plans without leaving their desks. to move as much as possible to Linux* in the next few years. “Novell ZENworks gives us the option to distribute applications and patches all at once, Tropitone has also reduced software costs or in phases,” said Cornelison. “We have by using open source software and can been able to complete upgrades, such as now choose the best applications for its Microsoft Windows XP, without any user business. Novell ZENworks has significantly disruption. We are a much more productive reduced IT travel time and allows the IT staff company when we can give users exactly to keep its workstations up to date from a what they need.” central location.

The IT staff uses ZENworks Asset “Novell solutions paid for themselves Management to automatically track and quickly and have helped us maintain the manage its inventory, replacing the need to same IT budget we have had for the past manually update spreadsheets. Such track- five years,” said Cornelison. “We have a ing allows the company to make better stable, reliable work environment and can purchasing decisions and maintain add new virtual servers without the need licensing compliance. for more IT resources.”

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*Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.