Scale Computing Continued Momentum Within Manufacturing Industry

Scale Computing, Inc. announced ongoing momentum with customers in the manufacturing industry, as HC3 Edge and IT infrastructure solutions continue to enable manufacturers of all sizes and geographic distributions to optimize operations with self-healing, automated infrastructure for all applications on the plant floor and beyond.

“The manufacturing industry has undergone transformational changes on so many fronts this past year – from supply chain challenges, to shifting product demands, to being an increasing target of cyber-attacks,” said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder. “Plants of all sizes require easy to deploy and manage, localized compute infrastructure technology that is secure and resilient. Our HC3 Edge Computing solutions enable manufacturers to optimize their operations across the globe with self-healing, automated infrastructure that helps them grow.“

With the proper compute platform in place, manufacturing firms across all industries can deliver improved plant management, monitoring, security, productivity, and lower TCO, while keeping critical data and teams safe. HC3 software and appliances free IT teams from the complexity and costs of traditional IT, allowing them to focus more on furthering business needs.

Harrison Steel Castings Company is a producer of highly engineered carbon and low/medium alloy steel castings and operates electric arc furnaces and other precision machinery across a 650,000 square foot factory floor. Networking these machines was cost prohibitive, so staff previously resorting to using USB drives for data transfer. Implementing HC3 Edge solutions has helped the company address the outdated and unreliable systems previously in place that were preventing growth and slowing down business.

Shane Rogers, IT director, Harrison Steel Castings, noted: “Previously, our IT infrastructure was frequently running out of memory, failing to function properly and requiring frequent maintenance. With HC3, the system is so simple to operate, it runs on its own. It greatly improves reliability, reduces complexity, and gives us the ability to grow our IT infrastructure. We have a lot of big projects on the horizon, and we’re excited by how much closer they are to achieve now. We are set up for greater success knowing we can set up HC3, and it will run on its own without much oversight. This enables us to help our customers and focus on providing them with high-quality cast solutions.“

Ventura Foods, LLC, which delivers custom food solutions to food service, food manufacturing, and retail customers, faces the same IT challenges as many manufacturers, combined with the lower margins (and therefore budgets) that are the standard in the food industry. Overseeing 19 locations throughout the US and Canada, the Covid pandemic and related limits on travel and plant access forced their lean IT team to get even more creative than before.

“In this current climate, with uncertainty around when we will be allowed to go out to a location, we needed to make deployment ‘Ikea simple,’” said Wally Wheadon, director of IT Infrastructure, Ventura Foods. “With Scale Computing we are able to build out a device, put it back in its box, send it out, and anyone with some basic skills at the facility can put it into a rack, put the color-coded connections together, and be up and running and able to recover from one site to another.“

He continued: “My advice is that if you’re trying to simplify your environment, and also position yourself for whatever that next level of compute infrastructure may look like while still being tethered to some of your past, you have to look at Scale Computing.“

Benchmark Electronics, Inc., a provider of engineering, design, and manufacturing services, knew that their manufacturing sites were due a refresh, and also wanted to reduce spend and simplify IT operations. They aimed to have a centralized and standard IT infrastructure that would be more strategic and cost effective across their global manufacturing facilities.

By combining servers, virtualization and management into a single product, HC3 simplifies maintenance and management for Benchmark, providing savings in staff costs and time spent on the system. The scalability of the technology enables the IT team to add nodes in different locations around the company’s operations with minimum local configuration and customization required.

“We have standardized on Scale Computing at our remote sites because those clusters are easy to manage and deploy,” said Stacy Black, director of infrastructure and operations, Benchmark Electronics. “We have reduced our spend and saved a great deal of time not having to train staff on legacy virtualization, as well as not having to spend time managing multiple vendors.“

Scale Computing is offering manufacturing organizations a free trial for HC3 Edge.