Similarly, the Headquarters Support Command center for the Coast Guard in Buzzard Point, Washington, D.C., had to make security improvements when it became a part of the Department of Homeland Security. Sept. 11 "escalated our security communications needs," says Lt. Commander Kip Whiteman, chief of information services.
Whiteman needed to create a secure communications platform for use by the senior officers and executive-service civilians at the headquarters. The center installed a Cubix PC-blade system using Xeon processors, connected by fiber to 30 Avocent client stations. "If you don't give them tools to communicate securely, and do it in a way that's efficient and convenient and meets their needs, I think a lot of important conversations just don't happen," Whiteman says.
The Coast Guard has been so satisfied with the Buzzard Point installation that it's considering similar efforts for its Atlantic and Pacific command centers, he says.
Solidiform Inc., a manufacturer of aluminum castings used in the aerospace and automotive industries, is another believer in PC blades. The company wanted to move its PCs from engineers' offices to the manufacturing floor to improve the production flow by having on-site analysis of items such as 3-D modeling, says IT manager Craig Sanders.
Conventional PCs couldn't survive long on the factory floor where aluminum dust would damage them, and thin clients didn't have the video quality needed, Sanders says. Solidiform installed six Xeon-based blades made by Cubix in a back room to control six Avocent manufacturing-floor PCs, he says.
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