Customers partake in the cornucopia of products and services.

Whether it's soup-to-nuts or IT infrastructure, a national food distributor doesn't scrimp on quality.

What do gourmet food and terminal servers have in com? In today's rapidly evolving e-business world, everything.

Colorado Prime Foods (Farmingdale, NY), specializing in the home delivery of fine foods for more than 40 years, has a unique business model that brings gourmet cuisine and culinary products directly to customers' dinner tables and kitchens. Although Colorado Prime customers are more concerned with the company's lamb chops than its LAN networks, Colorado Prime continuously evaluates and improves its IT infrastructure to ensure that customers receive quality products and services.

To help support its nationwide operation, which includes 75 offices across 30 states, Colorado Prime's networking and communications systems rely on the performance of PortServer terminal servers from Digi International. According to Ian Stovall, network engineer at Colorado Prime, Digi PortServers are critical links in the company's extended IT and e-business chain, enabling Colorado Prime's 2,000 employees to perform a variety of networking and communications tasks from thin clients, PCs and laptops.

For Stovall, versatility is the key. With help from its systems integrator, Manchester Equipment Co. (Hauppauge, NY), Colorado Prime installed a 32-port Digi PortServer II to streamline its local area network (LAN). With this equipment, Stovall leverages a single terminal server to support network and Internet access, faxing, printing and remote access.

These terminal and communications servers allow users to connect clusters of eight or 16 serial ports to a LAN. The PortServer II offers expandability to 64 serial ports and support for LAN-to-LAN connections over frame relay. The PortServer is an entry-level terminal server that allows connecting clusters of eight or 16 high-speed serial ports to any TCP/IP Ethernet network. This server supports asynchronous terminals, modems, printers and other serial devices and is hardware independent, allowing users to access any type of networked server supporting TCP/IP.

The PortServer II communications server supports all these features, plus higher performance, configuration expandability from 16 to 64 ports, and extensive network management and security features. Additionally, the PortServer II supports dial-up and LAN-to-LAN connections for TCP/IP remote access to the corporate LAN or the Internet over frame relay and analog lines.

For communications, Stovall connected eight U.S. Robotics' 56K modems to his server and plans to add more as volume increases. In addition to internal use of the modems for faxing, e-mail and Internet access, Stovall estimates that 20 to 30 divisional vice presidents, field office employees and warehouse personnel call into company headquarters during a typical business day. The server allows them to access the company's network, log on to the Internet, and check order status and e-mail.

Stovall adds that there are also a growing number of Colorado Prime telecommuters, increasing the value of a terminal server that can reliably and consistently handle remote access functions. "Remote access activity continues to expand for Colorado Prime and reliable performance from our terminal server is critical," says Stovall. "We've run eight lines, 10 hours a day for the past year and employees have never had problems gaining access. It's a rock-solid system."

Colorado Prime also worked with Manchester in installing a rack of twelve 16-port Digi PortServers that connect thin clients and PCs to two IBM RS/6000 servers running AIX. RealPort software from Digi provides local serial port functionality (Real TTY), as well as incoming and outgoing Rlogin and Telnet sessions on each port. Employees use the thin clients for access to customer data, placement and tracking records, inventory levels, information on marketing and sales programs, and a variety of other network applications. The rack of PortServers also connects fax and modems to the Colorado Prime TCP/IP Ethernet.

"Since Manchester brought in the Digi PortServers," Stovall explains, the reliability of our Ethernet connection is never in question. We have increased flexibility with the new terminal servers, allowing us to allocate ports on a need basis. Network computing technology should deliver competitive advantages for our company, not headaches. Now we have an affordable solution, and our employees can focus their energies on business, not the MIS department."

Rich Klein, senior account manager at Manchester, foresees a growth of terminal server sales on the whole. "To heighten security and reduce costs, network computers and thin clients are regaining acceptance among corporate end users," says Klein.

Colorado Prime will soon begin an aggressive e-commerce initiative that will enable customers to conveniently purchase its products over the Internet.

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