They say that the three most stressful events in life are death, divorce and relocation. A Canadian art publishing house experienced a kind of divorce along with a facilities move that could have proven lethal had it not been for the help of isoutsource.com.

When Winn Devon, Canadian Art Prints and Devon U.K. bought themselves back from a parent corporation, they needed to consolidate the Winn Devon and Canadian Art Prints facilities and create an independent IT infrastructure. isoutsource.com had assisted Winn Devon with prior IT projects and support, and was a natural fit to help the company move its data center from Seattle to British Columbia.

What's more, Canadian Art Prints didn't have the expertise in house to complete the needed upgrades. They looked to isoutsource.com to reconfigure the network and deploy new hardware and software.

"We laid out the plans to redesign their entire network so that they are now completely self-sufficient," said Ryan Marberg of isoutsource.com. "The plan involved replacing all of their network and server equipment over time."

The isoutsource.com team redesigned the server room, installed the server racks and put in new network gear. They worked hand in hand with the cabling provider as well as an internal team that supported the firm’s JD Edwards ERP application.

isoutsource.com also deployed a new Lotus Notes Server, and migrated the firm's e-mail data from the former parent company. The cutover was made without any downtime.

"We built the mail server here at our office in Seattle and shipped it down to California where we replicated the databases, because there were huge amounts of data," Marberg said. "We then sent the mail server up to Canada where we implemented it and set it up so that the e-mail was replicated between Canada and California. After we systematically migrated all the users to the new server in Canada, we severed the tie to California. We made a seamless cutover for the end-users, even those working remotely from home as well as those in the U.K."

The U.K. element added a degree of complexity to the project. Devon U.K. needed to maintain connectivity with the Canadian Art Prints / Winn Devon facility in Canada.

Prior to the relocation, the companies had utilized an expensive Frame Relay connection to link the various sites. isoutsource.com recommended that they use a secure, high-speed Internet connection instead, and set up a VPN utilizing WatchGuard firewalls.

"That saved us $36,000 per year,” said Pat Oates, the project manager in charge of the relocation and network redesign. "isoutsource.com set up the VPN connection between Canada and the U.K., which basically costs us nothing. It works great and the savings are pretty dramatic. In fact, the VPN is actually faster than the Frame Relay connection."

Since the relocation, Canadian Art Prints has hired an IT professional to handle server deployments. However, Oates says that the expertise of the isoutsource.com team was vital to the success of the relocation and reconfiguration project, and Canadian Art Prints continues to rely on isoutsource.com for advice and support.

"isoutsource.com did everything on the network side, from start to finish," Oates said. "They did a great job and we certainly will use them again."

Canadian Art Prints' collection of open edition prints and art cards showcases an eclectic mix of highly successful imagery by more than 150 artists worldwide. Its images are sold through galleries, framers, museums, gift boutiques and art retailers around the world — a global reach supported by its IT infrastructure.

A recent data center move and reconfiguration could have proven disruptive without the expertise and project management of isoutsource.com. Thanks to isoutsource.com, the firm was able to work through some dramatic changes without impacting its operations.