Pittsburgh-based General Nutrition Centers (GNC) is the largest corporation
in the United States solely dedicated to vitamins and nutritional supplements.
Originally, GNC was printing 1.5 million pages per month from an IBM mainframe
to two online Xerox production printers. However, vigorous growth resulted in
the introduction of additional operating systems and platforms, creating a compatibility
problem with their mainframe printing system. That's when IKON Office Solutions
was called upon to help GNC find an answer.
Rich Latshaw, IKON Digital Systems Specialist, says, "We wanted a seamless
transition from the mainframe format to the new printers we installed. Solimar
offers a transparent solution in converting the Xerox resources to either PostScript
or PCL, so the customer doesn't have to tweak their data or reprogram. With
Solimar, we were printing mainframe applications within one day of installation."
"With Solimar, we were printing mainframe applications within one day of installation."
Rich Latshaw
IKON Office Solutions
Initially attracted by the integrated channel connection capability of the
Solimar® Print/Director, Latshaw soon realized the power of this print server.
"Not only can GNC convert from the BUS/TAG mainframe connection, but they
can now print from all of their operating systems and networks: mainframe, Novell,
Windows NT, Unix, and the IBM AS/400. From one terminal they can run everything!"
says Latshaw. "Drag-and-drop, that's the key here," adds Gary Edmondson,
Operations Analyst for GNC. "We have the flexibility of simply moving jobs
to where we need them."
"Everything feeds into the Solimar server, and from there we decide where we want to print it."
Rich Latshaw
IKON Office Solutions
GNC is also saving time and costs on print job recovery with the Solimar Print/Director.
Jobs are retained in Solimar's print queue during the printing process, allowing
immediate restart if there is an interruption. This invaluable feature economizes
Edmondson's programming time. "Before we had a problem recovering jobs.
Now the recovery is instant," states Edmondson.
Solimar's expert Technical Support has also provided Edmondson and his staff
with quick and accurate answers to their printing questions. "Results and
turnaround were really quick," Edmondson notes. "They solved every
one of our problems."
