At the top sits the Unix cluster, located in the data center of the company's Winnipeg headquarters. UGG also maintains a frame relay wide-area network that interconnects its 250 grain silos with corporate headquarters. Each server has a dial-up connection to one of eight access points in the corporate network. The new network has dramatically improved functionality, says Wood. They can log onto and download information from the SmartStream Financials applications running on the Unix servers, analyze the data in a local Lotus spreadsheet, then upload the results back to the central servers.
Wood believes the cost savings of moving off mainframes are widely misunderstood.
Any graphing of computer operating expenses would start at a certain time and show costs trending upward into the future. The difference, in his view, is that with Unix systems, the chart starts at a much lower price point and stays lower over time. UGG's cluster configuration provides another benefit the mainframe couldn't supply. Each of the six systems is dedicated to a specific application, such as the financials, or supporting incoming and outgoing information requests from local users at the 250 silos. If one HP 9000 should fail, the cluster configuration provides the network with built-in redundancy.