Focused on the health-care, retail, public sector, financial and professional services markets, Lawson serves more than 2,800 clients and boasts a 30 percent to 40 percent annual growth rate. Fueled by 3Com systems, Lawson uses SEA internally for its own applications. At the St. Paul headquarters, the new Gigabit Ethernet LAN is accelerating every facet of the company's software development, from editing to testing. Lawson is also employing the network to strengthen its customer and vendor support. For example, customers now dial into Lawson's Web site to get updates regarding service calls as well as invoices and other financial information regarding their accounts.
Vendors routinely use the e-business system to track purchase orders from inception to payment.
Brian Grout, network manager at the company, estimates that Lawson handles 1.4 million to 2 million page hits each month. They can now connect through the Internet for self-service. Our previous network could not handle that kind of activity. Lawson is also using the network for employee video training, and he will soon deploy videoconferencing at five pilot sites. The SuperStack II 3900s supply Fast Ethernet links to 150 Novell, Unix and Windows NT servers.