Picard & Criston - Success story

Securing IT starts by managing IT

Criston Optimises Picard Surgelés’ IT Equipment Upgrade

Picard & Criston - Success story

With 500 new PCs to be deployed and managed in a complex applications environment, the IS division of the leading French retailer for frozen products needed to standardise its inventory and remote distribution procedures while simplifying the job for its IT team.

Picard Surgelés’ need - Optimisation

In 2005, Picard Surgelés (no. 1 frozen products retailer in France) launched a major project to upgrade and optimise its PC environment. The objectives were, first, to improve the performance of all systems, and second to optimise the return on investment in hardware and software, especially with regards to maintenance and management.

Split over three main sites in France (Issy-Les-Moulineaux, Nemours and Fontainebleau), the company’s 500 new PCs also needed to get configured to receive the complex business applications implemented by Picard Surgelés – either 3rd-party solutions, or software developed by Picard Surgelés’ own IT division.

However, the company had no effective solution for managing its PC equipment, turning the tasks of creating an inventory and identifying configurations and requirements for service and maintenance into a complicated and long process.

Moreover, in addition to insufficient technical information concerning the environment, there was a lack of remote distribution functions for the applications. “We used an obsolete inventory system, which no longer worked. We had no visibility on the PC environment and no remote distribution capability”, Hervé Guehl, Infrastructure Manager for Picard Surgelés’ IT division, explained. “For example, it took nearly a whole day to configure each new PC”.

The answer – an easy to use, effective technology solution

After several months of investment in upgrading its PCs, Picard Surgelés’ IT division then decided, at the end of 2005, to standardise its inventory and remote software distribution processes. The Infrastructure Department, which was in charge of this project, drew up specifications for choosing a solution. The service provider selected had to satisfy a number of key criteria:

- Offer a clear and accurate technical view of all the PCs
- Combine remote distribution functions with the technical inventory
- Allow rapid deployment
- Reduce maintenance costs noticeably
- No complex IT staff training

Following its review of the market, Picard Surgelés chose Criston Desktop Management, including automated inventory and remote distribution functions. The reasons for the choice were two-fold: performance and simplicity. “Once installed, the solution chosen should not make our job more complicated. We came across a number of packaged software suppliers whose proposals were sophisticated and far too complicated”, Hervé Guehl explained.

The benefits – time-savings and standard configurations

Begun in the second half of 2005, the deployment of Precision Desktop Management was carried out in less than three weeks, going straight into production. Precision Desktop Management now allows Picard Surgelés’ IT division to have detailed knowledge of its hardware and software environment and to implement operating system and software updates automatically.

“What we needed was a technical inventory rather than an accountancy system. It had to be accurate, detailed, and easy to use, to provide an effective service for our equipment upgrade programme”, explains Hervé Guehl. In order not to restrict the hardware inventory to the standard parameters (CPU, OS, memory, disk and ports), Criston localises, researches, collects, maintains and manages the hardware inventories for customers’ systems based on WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) data. In addition, Criston automatically produces reports using whatever type of data is in the database.

Regarding deployment, Picard Surgelés now automatically distributes its applications remotely and updates its operating systems and software. “Once they are packaged for remote distribution, the applications can be deployed almost instantaneously on each workstation, without a visit from the IT division”, Hervé Guehl continued. Easy to use, and featuring dynamic administration and scheduled distribution, Precision Desktop Management enables simultaneous multi-system distribution. In addition, the module offers native support for Microsoft Software Installer (MSI), thus directly exploiting this package format to reduce the deployment effort. Remote distribution ensures that all the applications are installed identically on all the. In this way, the IT division saves not only on deployments but also on updates, which no longer require manual intervention.

“Before the Criston solution was implemented, a PC containing all the packages would need one day’s work, provided the technician knew all the applications. Now it just takes us one hour”, concludes Hervé Guehl.