AUSTIN, Texas, 18 April 2005. ClearCube Technology, the market leader and pioneer in PC Blade computing, and NORAD, the U.S. North American Aerospace and Defense Command, today announced that the new command center at The Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station (CMAFS) is running on ClearCube PC Blades.
The new facility is the command and control center for the mountain, aggregating information from different analysis teams and providing a single decision point.
The Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, a part of NORAD, is an information collection operation for a worldwide system of satellites, radars, and sensors that provide early warning of a missile, air, or space threat to North America. The command center features new technology, including ClearCube PC Blades, to help officers to process real-time threat information more quickly.
Through reductions in costs and increases in user and IT productivity, IDC recently released figures estimating CMAFS's annual savings and productivity benefits to be $3,100 per user based on an annual investment of under $800 per user.
"We're one-third of a mile behind granite and clearly security is our primary concern. Prior to using ClearCube, end users would literally lock their hard drives in safes before leaving each day. Now, having the blades in a central location away from the floor where top-secret information is being processed helps us reduce security concerns immensely," said Garland Garcia, network chief at CMAFS's Network Control Center. "With PC Blades we can fix at least 80 percent of our PC problems remotely, keeping IT staff out of classified work centers.
"Additionally, to get a user up and running after a downtime event took hours, on average, with traditional machines. With the PC Blades, because they can be hot swapped, we generally have users up in a couple of minutes. The average repair time has been reduced from about 10 minutes to six minutes. Overall, about 30 percent of unplanned user downtime has gone away because of the ClearCube solution."
NORAD has been using PC Blades in its various intelligence-gathering areas since 2001. This new deployment is in the command center where general officers receive real-time information on potential security threats in North American airspace. PC Blades provide higher reliability, easier security implementation and faster troubleshooting, overall increasing the IT organization's efficiency.
"Nothing is more important than our nation's ability to anticipate, defend and respond to both foreign and domestic threats. NORAD and this new command center are at the epicenter of this decision making process," said Carl Boisvert, president and CEO of ClearCube. "PC Blades provide the infrastructure to ensure that the information analysts need is always at their fingertips."
ClearCube Technology is the pioneer and market leader in PC Blade computing solutions. ClearCube enables customers to reduce their support costs while dramatically improving availability and security throughout their computing infrastructure all while improving the end-user's experience. For more information, see www.clearcube.com.
