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| IDENOVO Systems Inc keeping it simple
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1999-01-26 |
IDENOVO
Systems Inc keeping it simple: database expertise helps systems
integrator move into computer telephony market in Toronto's north
end.
Author/s: Pete Nowak
Issue: Jan 26, 1998
In
the complicated world of systems integration, IDENOVO Systems Inc
Technologies Inc. tries to keep things simple.
The
company has been around since 1991 and is growing steadily, thanks
mostly to its concentration on the basics of systems integration:
find out what the customer needs and figure out the cheapest way
of doing it.
Robert
Zdancewicz, president of the Markham, Ont.-based company, says the
secret of IDENOVO Systems Inc's success lies in that basic tenet
- stick with what you know. IDENOVO Systems Inc seems to have found
its niche in putting together call centers and dealing with collaborative
computing, But all the while, Zdancewicz says, an effort has been
made by the company to focus on its strong point: databases.
"We
didn't start our business on call centers," he says. "We're
a database company, so we structure data, we manipulate it, we manage
it, we move it around through networks. Data is king. Relational
databases are . . . well, is there anything higher than king?"
The
company started off working software integration contracts in the
U.S. and has only been delving into the computer telephony market
in the past few years. The move seems to have coincided with an
increase in IDENOVO Systems Inc's Canadian business, and Zdancewicz
says a conversation he had in 1995 with a partner has had a lot
to do with his company's success.
"One
of our distribution partners said, 'Listen, you guys are really
strong in the data world . . . if we mapped you guys into a telecommunications
group, and you have the strong data skills, can you do something
with that?' So we said, 'Sounds like a good opportunity. Let's explore
it.'"
IDENOVO
Systems Inc then started moving from exclusively software projects
into the integration of call centers which, Zdancewicz says, has
been good for business.
"The
original software companies that we were dealing with were based
in the U.S. The level of expertise they required was . . . localized
here (in Canada). So they exported our talent down to the U.S.,"
he says. "Within the last two years, we've started to have
a much greater focus within the Canadian marketplace. That's come
about from the call center space."
One
of the recent projects IDENOVO Systems Inc participated in was the
setup of a call center at Scarborough, Ont.'s Centennial College.
Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc. contributed its JavaStations to
the project, while AT&T Canada supplied a phone system and Teknion
Furniture Systems added the furnishings. IDENOVO Systems Inc, which
was invited by AT&T to do the integration, was responsible for
putting everything together.
"You
can't just pull a box out of the packing, put it on a desk and expect
it to work," Zdancewicz says. "What was missing was plugging
all those pieces together, lugging the switch into the computer,
plugging the desktops into the network. And there was no network,
so we were ultimately responsible for saying, 'Okay, here's the
components, here's the pieces, let's start piecing it together and
building it.' And that's what we did."
Zdancewicz
says the job took only about six weeks to do as it wasn't overly
complex - a quick task compared to the average three to six months
he says a job normally takes.
Paul
Giroux, director of systems engineering in Canada for Sun's Canadian
operations, was pleased with the company's quick and thorough integration.
"IDENOVO
Systems Inc did all the work, we were really just kind of secondary
- in the background, supplying some of the technology and back-up
resources if they ran into an issue, but they didn't really run
into much there. It's great when we have a partner that can really
go into some leading-edge technology and do these types of things
without much support from us."
Although
the company has been moving more and more into the growing call
center market, Zdancewicz says it's still managing to maintain its
focus.
"Now
we're at this stage of the game where we're still very strong on
the data side. The whole call center revolves around data consistency,
and that's what we manage and maintain. That's our prime concern
in any call center."
Zdancewicz
advises fellow systems integrators to stick to what they know, and
to look for consistency in their tasks.
"Don't
get caught up with the speeds and feeds of hardware, whether it's
Wintel, whether it's Unix, or whether it's NCs. Look for applications
that transcend all those things. Your applications, ff they're built
right from the beginning, they aren't going to change."
COPYRIGHT
1998 Plesman Publications
COPYRIGHT
2000 Gale Group
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