Agrium

Success Story

As a fast-growing commodity business, Agrium needed better tools to integrate new users without increasing its IT staff or budget. Novell® ZENworks® provides centralized desktop management for a small IT staff and has helped reduce annual hardware costs by $250,000.

Overview

Agrium Inc. is a leading global marketer and producer and distributor of crop nutrients and a major retail supplier of agricultural products and services in both North and South America. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Agrium has more than 5,500 employees and revenues of $US 3.5 billion.

Challenge

For the wholesale division of Agrium, the key to success in a commodity business is to keep costs as low as possible. At the same time, Agrium is a fast-growing company, continually acquiring new companies and requiring an infrastructure that can easily assimilate new IT environments. The company needed to keep pace with rapid growth, without having to hire additional staff.

To deliver support patches and security updates, Agrium's IT staff had to re-image 1,700 individual workstations across several large plants. Each re-imaging project was time-consuming and cost the company at least $30,000. With a growing user base, a desktop management solution was critical to maintain consistency and reduce administrative time and costs.

Novell solution

"Managing desktop images used to be a full-time job. With Novell ZENworks, we've eliminated most of the manual work associated with imaging so we can update our machines as often as necessary."

Bruno Picone
Director of IT Infrastructure
Agrium

Agrium evaluated several desktop management solutions before selecting Novell ZENworks to centrally manage its servers and desktops.

"Novell ZENworks is integrated with Novell eDirectory™ so we can manage resources based on identity, rather than machine," said Bruno Picone, Director of IT Infrastructure at Agrium.

With Novell ZENworks, Agrium can create a standardized image irrespective of the hardware. In the past, imaging a machine required 20 minutes and the image was connected to specific hardware. Now the IT staff can image 10-15 machines in the same amount of time by distributing the image centrally from the local sever. Updating machines no longer requires travel to individual workstations or the need to ship CDs to each location.

"Managing desktop images used to be a full-time job," said Picone. "With Novell ZENworks, we've eliminated most of the manual work associated with imaging so we can update our machines as often as necessary."

Deploying applications also used to be a manual process. With Novell ZENworks the IT staff can deliver applications enterprise-wide in a day, rather than weeks. The remote control functionality in Novell ZENworks allows a centralized IT staff to support users across multiple locations. From a central location, IT staff can remote control a user's workstation to resolve helpdesk calls dramatically faster than before.

"The remote control feature of Novell ZENworks allows us to centrally manage sites that do not have an IT staff," said Picone. "Some of our sites require special equipment or a scheduled time to enter, such as our mines, and made for cumbersome IT visits. Now we can manage everything from the support desk."

Managing hardware and software inventory used to require hiring additional IT staff to visit each location. Now the IT staff uses ZENworks to automatically generate reports, both to make better decisions and to better comply with audits. Agrium recently completed a company acquisition that included 11 new locations. Using ZENworks, the IT staff was able to quickly integrate new users and give them the right access to resources.

"Sarbanes-Oxley requirements are not trivial for us and Novell solutions make all the difference in our ability to maintain compliance," said Picone. "We can easily provision and de-provision users, and we know exactly what applications they have rights to access. This is critical for us when integrating new companies."

Results

"The remote control feature of Novell ZENworks allows us to centrally manage sites that do not have an IT staff. Some of our sites require special equipment or a scheduled time to enter, such as our mines, and made for cumbersome IT visits. Now we can manage everything from the support desk."

Bruno Picone
Director of IT Infrastructure
Agrium

Moving to Novell ZENworks gives a centralized IT staff the ability to manage a geographically dispersed enterprise. Agrium has significantly reduced travel time to individual workstations and can image its machines 10-15 times faster. Now that images are no longer tied to specific hardware, the company plans to save $250,000 in its next desktop deployment.

Novell ZENworks is also a key component of the company's growth strategy. Agrium can quickly integrate newly acquired companies into its existing IT infrastructure, providing them with e-mail, shared folders and access to the right resources. The company has increased its user base by 10 percent without having to increase its IT budget or hire additional staff.

"We use Novell solutions because the products are so reliable we can run them with a lean IT staff," said Picone. "Our IT staff wears many hats and we need to handle many tasks without undue stress. A team of five handles all network, e-mail and desktop management for 2,200 users."