Case Study: Gibson Musical Instruments

Company Profile: In 1902, eight years after Orville Gibson created a new style of mandolin and guitar, five Kalamazoo businessmen formed the Gibson Company to help him keep up with the demand. Not satisfied simply with exploiting Orville's innovations, they refined his designs and also created new ways of promoting and popularizing their instruments at the grassroots level across America. All the great Gibson models, past and present, are products of a drive to perfection that represents the future as well as the legacy of Gibson: a drive to be not just the best, but to go to the next level, and be better than the best.

Last year, when Gibson purchased another well-known American instrument manufacturer, Baldwin Pianos, it faced an immediate challenge: how to connect Baldwin's two Arkansas manufacturing plants to the AS/400 at the new Baldwin data center in Nashville.
Problem to Solve
Gibson had to replace a Frame Relay SNA network with an IP network quickly because Baldwin had to vacate its old headquarters and there was not enough time to install circuits between two Arkansas plants and the new Nashville data center. Initially, Gibson purchased the Perle 594E IP Controller, but it crashed 3 or 4 times a day, shutting down all communication. People had to rekey data. IT spent hours upon hours in tech support with Perle and IBM. In February 2002, Gibson installed two e-Twin@x Controllers.

Benefits of the e-Twin@x Controller:

  1. It works: "The BOS e-Twin@x Controller hasn't gone down once."
  2. Easy configuration: "Completely intuitive, browser-based user interface, 100% understandable. Set everything up in 5 minutes, without even looking at documentation."

Customer Comments

Innovation and Perfection

"Our company has a tradition of innovation and perfection, and I was impressed to find a product that reflects the same ethic. It really is a very well designed and engineered product. BOS jazzed up a pretty archaic legacy technology and made it work the way it ought to work."

"The whole BOS product is so much better. For anyone who wants to go with IP, BOS is a no brainer."

Intuitive and Reliable

"Talk about a reversal of fortune! It was like night and day. Perle's installation and set-up was cryptic, their user interface was just terrible, and once their controller was installed it went down often. We had to reboot and restart three or four times a day."

"I was amazed that during the initial set-up, the BOS e-Twin@x Controller checks the AS/400 and installs whatever is missing. Everything you need is there."

Sets Up in 5 Minutes

"I spent hours upon hours with Perle and IBM tech support, trying to identify the problems. We tried everything. With BOS, it was like shining a bright beacon. It was totally set up in five minutes."

Pre-configure Support Translates to Big Resource Savings

"Once we configured the unit, we shipped it overnight to the manufacturing plant, where a non-technical lady plugged it into the Ethernet and moved over the Twinax lines. We powered it up and everything auto-configured. It hasn't gone down since."

Click here to read what else this customer and others are saying about the e-Twin@x Controller!

Contacts:
Tom Albert
Gibson Network Manager
E-mail: talbert@gibson.com

Franklin Traver
Computer Marketing of America (authorized BOS distributor)
Tel: (615) 847-4031
E-mail: franklintraver@cma-usa.com