The National Food Laboratory

The National Food Laboratory 

The Company
The National Food Laboratory (The NFL) provides consumer, quantitative and descriptive research and analysis services to a wide range of customers in the food, beverage and consumer packaged goods industries. The NFL’s customers rely on them to provide insight and analysis on specific aspects of a product and in turn use this data to drive product development and marketing activities. Many of The NFL’s customers are Fortune 500 companies and require fast turnaround of the data analysis in order to compete in their respective markets.

Business Challenge
In the past The NFL used a manual, labor-intensive data collection process prior to performing the analysis of the data for research studies. The process involves printing score sheets, distributing them to panelists for completion, collecting the score sheets and then manually entering the data into a database for analysis. Depending upon the study, this process could take anywhere from several hours to several days to complete.

The analysis is a key deliverable to their clients and The NFL takes pride in their ability to deliver test results to their clients in a timely fashion. The manual process was affecting their ability to be responsive to their clients and was putting a strain on their internal resources as they struggled to meet their client’s timetables.

The NFL identified a software solution (SIMS) that will enable them to stream line their data collection and analysis processes, and looked to Vital Signs Technology to help them architect and install the application and supporting systems.

Technology Solution
Vital Signs Technology designed a solution that took into account The NFL’s desire to solve the basic problem quickly and addressed their requirements to minimize the cost to acquire, install, support and manage these workstations (25) over the entire application life cycle.

For the technical architecture, Vital Signs selected a VDI implementation utilizing partnerships with VMware and Pano Logic. VMware is the leading virtual server platform which has revolutionized the computer industry by enabling multiple host operating systems (virtual guest operating systems) to run from a single hardware platform.

Pano Logic software and hardware is utilized to deliver an XP guest operating system to the user. The advantage to using Pano Logic is that the local hardware is a simple client that draws 3 watts of power and has no operating system making it a breeze to maintain. The ‘client’ workstation consists of a solid-state device (small box about the size of a Rubik’s cube) with connections for a keyboard, monitor, mouse and network.

The virtual desktop is an image of a Windows operating system and is stored on the server as file. The file delivered from the server to the Pano, via the network connection, using a proprietary technology. The person sitting at the workstation experiences a fully working PC, just as if the PC were sitting under their desk. All the Pano devices use the same image, so every client workstation is exactly the same and thus reduce management costs. If someone were to modify the virtual desktop at the client side, a simple reload of the image file would correct any errors. The image file reloads in a matter of seconds as opposed to waiting several minutes for a PC to fully boot.

Results and Benefits
The obvious benefits of deploying the SIMS application are faster turnaround time for test results, lower staff overhead and increased client satisfaction, which will have a positive impact on The NFL’s bottom line.

There are many indirect benefits of the Vital Signs Technology solution as well. The use of virtual technology will drive the total cost of ownership (TCO) of down by extending the useful life of the client workstations to 5-6 years instead of the industry standard 2-3 years. The NFL can also expect to see benefits through increased staff efficiency and lower ongoing support and maintenance costs.

The staff efficiency improvements is realized during test setup because the time it will take to stage each of the client workstations will be greatly reduced. The Pano devices have a smaller footprint, do not require storage and boot in seconds rather than minutes, which is important when you factor in 25 workstations and the number of tests that are run in a given period. Also worth noting is that the Pano devices use solid state technology and have no inherent value outside of The NFL installation. This reduces the risk due to breakage and theft.

PC industry analysts suggest the indirect costs of PC ownership are roughly $2,000 per year per for a managed PC and $3,000 per year for an unmanaged PC. Indirect costs include the cost of managing the updates (security patches, application updates), desk side support and lost employee productivity, which is the largest component of the indirect costs. The Vital Signs Technology solution lowers the indirect costs of managing and supporting the client workstations by using the Pano device (no moving parts) and centralized management of the Client O/S (update once, distribute to all 25 devices). Over the lifetime of the solution, this adds up to significant cost savings.