[April 19, 2012]

Enventis Designs and Implements Scalable Cisco Unified Communications System for Young America Corporation

Enventis, a subsidiary of HickoryTech (NASDAQ:HTCO), recently completed the deployment of a Cisco (News - Alert) Unified Computing System (UCS) for Young America, an incentive marketing firm, at their headquarters in Edina, Minn. Young America turned to Enventis, a Cisco Gold Certified and Master Unified Communications (News - Alert) Partner, to identify a solution that would increase their data center capacity to handle their growing volume of business and enhance performance to boost employee productivity and customer satisfaction. Enventis (News - Alert) designed and implemented a UCS solution that integrates resources into a single converged system.

Young America's existing technology needed to be replaced with much faster and more powerful systems. "At any given time, we were in need of additional CPU capacity, memory or network bandwidth," said Ted Bienapfl, director of infrastructure, network services, and development at Young America. "We chose Enventis because of their reputation locally and their high-level expertise implementing Cisco based solutions."

Young America worked with Enventis to help build a turn-key computing environment using Cisco UCS, which would easily integrate with VMware and would provide the foundation for the future replacement of their existing phone system and call center with Cisco Unified Communications (UC) and Unified Contact Center (UCCX) solutions. Enventis utilized a three-phase approach of discovery, design and implementation to identify business and technical requirements for the project and develop the best configuration and deployment strategy for the UCS. As part of the new architecture, Young America upgraded its existing infrastructure to a Cisco UCS-based data center architecture using Cisco Nexus 7000 switches and Cisco Multilayer Fabric Switches.

The solution deployed by Enventis offered Young America the efficiency and reliability they needed to reduce costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Server, network and storage utilization rates have improved significantly, while power usage has significantly decreased. The UCS solution also enables Young America to quickly expand its computing environment as its needs grow.

"The UCS solution reduced our data center footprint to a fraction of what it was and created power and cooling eficiencies," added Bienapfl. "With this infrastructure upgrade, we basically opened up the floodgates to any and all business submissions. Our customers are noticing the fact that they're getting their web pages quicker and that they can throw more jobs at us. Most importantly, they are noticing better performance and service across the board."

Young America will continue to roll out the Cisco UC and UCCX solutions this summer, improving the productivity of more than 300 employees and providing the capability to enhance services to their customers.

About Young America Corporation

With 40 years of experience and more than 300,000 marketing programs, Young America provides the full range of customer engagement and incentive services for its clients, including data analytics, strategy, rewards, and communications and program management. From acquisition to growth and retention, YA creates Engagement Marketing solutions that drive greater brand awareness, invite more customers and generate more sales for their clients. Young America provides a single platform that integrates strategies in support of driving incremental behavior from consumers, employees and channel partners. Young America Corporation is based in Young America, Minnesota and is one of the largest rebate and loyalty program fulfillment providers. Visit us at www.Young-America.com.

About Enventis

Enventis, a Master Level, Unified Communications and Gold Certified Cisco Partner, specializes in providing integrated voice, data and network communication solutions to businesses and service providers across the Midwest. Leveraging its five-state fiber optic network, Enventis also provides IP telephony, transport services and MPLS. Enventis is a subsidiary of HickoryTech; NASDAQ: HTCO. To learn more about Enventis and how "We'll Network That," visit www.enventis.com. Video.

About HickoryTech

HickoryTech Corporation is a leading communications provider serving business and residential customers in the upper Midwest. With headquarters in Mankato, Minn., the corporation has 500 employees and an expanded, multi-state fiber network spanning more than 3,250 route miles serving Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota. Enventis provides IP-based voice and data solutions, MPLS networking, data center and managed hosted services and communication systems to businesses across a five-state region. HickoryTech delivers broadband Internet, Digital TV, voice and data services to businesses and consumers in southern Minnesota and northwest Iowa. The Company trades on the NASDAQ, symbol: HTCO, and is a member of the Russell 2000 Index. For more information, visit www.hickorytech.com.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]