Early in 2001, Carl Rideout bought some wonderful new technology.
He and his customers have been having a ball with it for the last 18 months.
Carl, founder and president of Mainland Information Systems Ltd., speaks of the powerful open storage solution centre in the same respectful terms an automobile fancier uses to describe a vintage Ferrari.
The company describes the lab as an industrial-strength mini architecture lab that showcases various data availability environments including SAN (Storage Area Networks), NAS (Network Attached Storage), backup and recovery and high availability technologies. It occupies a
temperature-controlled room of its own within Mainland’s Calgary offices at Suite 2710, 140-4th Ave. S.W.
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| The Mainland Information Systems team includes partners Michael Koury, Monty Carter and Carl Rideout. |
"This data centre is the only one of its kind in Western Canada," Rideout said with understandable pride. “The storage centre allows us to demonstrate to our customers proof of concept work which helps them mitigate the risk they face during implementation," he continued.
Western Canada's premier integration services provider for storage, database and server architecture, Mainland also serves its large base of satisfied customers out of offices in Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria.
The word "service" is key, as far as Rideout is concerned. And the services that Mainland supplies include backup/recovery assessments, Tivoli storage management, Oracle infrastructure reviews and Veritas implementation services – to name just a few.
A transplanted Newfoundlander who combines a keen strategic sense with a charming style of doing business, Rideout and his hand-picked team have built Mainland into a $22-million enterprise in only 12 years.
Mainland coined the notion “Availability Management” to describe its business. Says Rideout: “We believe data is the centre of the universe for any organization and we have built our service offerings around keeping the client’s data highly available. These offerings address important issues of backup and recovery, high availability, server and storage consolidation and utilization, database performance and infrastructure design and assessment.”
"Once we understand the particular data requirements of our customers, we can not only design an IT solution for them, we can implement it cost effectively and even operate it on their behalf," he explained.
So far, Mainland's customers aren't complaining. Certainly, they include some of the biggest names in the energy business. But beyond oil and gas, the company serves an unusually diverse group.
Rideout and his team have provided expert IT solutions and services to international retailers, insurance companies, financial and telecommunication companies, colleges and
universities.
Most recently, the company earned the gratitude of Landmark Graphics Canada, a division of Halliburton and the leading supplier of software and services for the upstream oil and gas industry.
Mainland's gifted technical consultants played a crucial role in the design and implementation of Landmark's new multi-client data management hosting centre, (known as Grand Basin) now up and running in Calgary.
Landmark management applauded the Mainland team, which efficiently assessed the company's database and server requirements, then provided the solutions, service and support to implement them and keep them rolling at optimum levels.
Eric Andersen, Business Development Manager for Landmark, says of the services: “Mainland was able to quickly understand our business and technical requirements. Their outstanding level of support and professsional service have enabled us to implement the infrastructure we required, on time and on budget.”
Rideout was particularly pleased by Landmark's kind words because he and his senior advisers (Michael Koury, VP Business Development; Monty Carter, VP Sales & Marketing; and Laurie Campbell, Technical Services Director) have worked hard to build a customer-service model that their competitors can't match.
"We've been so fortunate," the president continued. "We've been able to attract, retain and develop a staff of skilled, dedicated people who have great reputations within their field. When you put this kind of team together, you become a force to be reckoned with," he said.
"I truly believe, from a datamanagement perspective, nobody else does what we can do."
That includes a commitment to service and support that occupies the top rung on Mainland's ladder of priorities. It means the Mainland team will visit your premises, implement an appropriate storage-management solution, then train your staff to run it. Or, if you prefer, Rideout's team has extensive experience to assume full responsibility for managing the storage component on an outsourced basis.
Mainland's commitment to service means providing support services on a system-wide or piece-work basis on a daily,
weekly or monthly plan.
"We believe our determination to stay in touch with our customers on a regular basis gives us an edge over the competition," said Rideout.
As he says with a twinkle in his eye, he and his team are easy people to do business with.
Find out for yourself by calling Mainland at 1-800-565-1127.
And check out the informative Mainland website at:
www.mainland.ca.
