Turbo Dynamics set for the future

Dorset based turbocharger specialist, Turbo Dynamics (TD) is well-known for being at the forefront of the turbocharger industry. The company was the first to advertise and have regular features in magazines, to house a variety of balancing machines thus offering the best test facilities, to offer technical-data backup and to have a bespoke, specifically built database created for the company, with most competitors following suit afterwards.

Only last year, Turbo Dynamics introduced a new Cisco VoIP phone system bringing with it a multitude of benefits for the company; a revolutionary step at the time.

Now, Turbo Dynamics has done it again. In order to stay up-to-date and fully equipped for the 21st Century, the company has added a dedicated Server Room to its premises.

Turbo Dynamics’ Head Quarters comprises of two industrial units in Somerford Business Park, Christchurch, which house offices, part stores, work areas and a fully equipped Machine Shop. Now the setup also boasts a brand-new Server Room.

The room has been built to ensure that the company’s servers are kept cool, dust free and secure in order for them to work more efficiently/reduce power consumption and to consequently lower operational costs. The specifically built room has been designed to do this through the use of insulation and a built-in air conditioning unit. Both Category 6 and Fibre Optic cables have been used to link the servers back to the main data hub, ensuring optimum data transfer speeds. Environmental monitoring is also in place to check temperature and humidity, alerting staff by email and text of any undue variations.

On top of this, the carefully designed room has been created to reduce noise pollution produced by the servers; the room is fully sound-proofed.

Turbo Dynamics Managing Director, Peter Marsh explained that this was a carefully planned change. Peter said: “We’re constantly striving to better our IT infrastructure, technical data accessibility and service to customers.

“The ‘big move’ [of the servers] had to be well planned as it not only required the rack of physical servers to be fully dismantled, stripped down, cleaned and then moved to the new location, but also a complete rebuild of the main data hub into a data cabinet that houses all the gigabit switches, routers and firewall devices.

“The whole VoIP phone system and other auxiliary telephone lines had to be re-wired and all in time for business as usual on Monday morning! A dedicated team worked throughout the weekend, starting at 6.00pm on the Friday night and finishing ahead of schedule. It caused some disruption and down time for TD’s website, but with no issues on the Monday morning when the rest of the staff returned.”

The Turbo Dynamics Server Room setup lays the foundations for the company’s planned migration process towards virtualisation.

Virtualisation is where all of the company computers run from just one powerful machine, meaning that Turbo Dynamics’ employees would only require a monitor each, not a PC workstation, in order to do their work. The virtualisation would also result in faster Internet connections. It is a cheaper way forward for the company as, when it expands further, new workstations will not be needed.

Peter explained that the Server Room was just the first step in a number of changes that were taking place or planned for the near future, in order to keep the company on-top and ready for change.

“Virtualisation will mean that TD will have more computer power for servers and applications. In administration terms it will reduce support and downtime. The Sun Microsystems and IBM servers and Storage array will allow us to get rid of 98% of our desktop computers and save approximately 41472000 watts of electricity per year! This means that TD will be greener and more cost efficient. Reducing our carbon footprint and being more efficient will enable us to stay streets ahead of the competition.

“This marks the first stage of a complete re-design of our IT infrastructure to support our new ecommerce solution and dedicated database systems for the management and quality control of our manufacturing and repair processes, as well as customer service. You can expect to see our new online purchasing system in the spring of 2009 followed by online customer support applications and information systems.”

So once again at the forefront of change and embracing new technologies, Turbo Dynamics looks set to come out the other side of the recession better, stronger and more ready than ever.

For more information about Turbo Dynamics visit turbodynamics.co.uk