NFI Industries Calgary Network Upgrade, AP Installation

NFI™  Industries Inc. provides logistics and distribution services since 1932. The Company offers transportation management, warehousing, freight services, backhaul optimization, and fleet engineering solutions. NFI Industries conducts business operations worldwide.

NFI Industries needed to upgrade their IT infrastructure including switches, router, Access points, handheld devices, etc.. They needed an IT company who has been through such across the board upgrade. It was of paramount importance to find a right company, since they didn’t have any IT personnel in Calgary. They had contacted many local IT companies to achieve their goals. It was hard to find a Local provider with proven experience on similar projects. After searching for an experienced IT company to support their Calgary Network upgrade, NFI’s internal IT support chose us.

“Our aim was to deploy upgrade in steps, so, if things don’t work at any stage, we could rollback, troubleshoot, and fix issues before moving onto the next stage. Due to continuous operations of the facility, they couldn’t allow long downtime. At the same time, it was crucial as the local IT support become eyes and ears for the remote support, perform thorough testing at every step of the way, detect issues as quickly as possible, and report them so that remote support can act quickly.”

XllenTech Solutions’ become just what the client was looking for. We assigned a highly experienced IT expert to support their goals. The activity began with a survey of the onsite devices, inventory of all devices in operation as well as the ones marked as non-functional, so that they can be removed during the upgrade process. A detailed survey was performed across over 120,000 sqft warehouse, location for IDF was determined and marked. During multiple visit to the site, each step was revisited to avoid any potential issue or lack of enough details.

During the survey, an excel sheet with asset details and remarks on each device was prepared. Wi-Fi survey was performed to mark AP location across the warehouse. With scissor lift, each location was inspected closely for cable run from nearby IDF, AP installation and any potential hurdle to be resolved.

A step by step guide to follow during the upgrade was prepared. NFI Internal IT was impressed with our attention to detail and an ability to cover potential issues and resolution to each one of them.

During the 4 days of upgrade, all the gathered information was used and step by step guide was followed closely. Few small diversions from the guide was discussed and evaluated before making the change.

NFI Industries was very happy to see little downtime and highly effective communication with local staff during the entire process. SD-WAN was configured for the site. Cable run from IDF to AP locations were installed, AP Devices were installed, primary router was replaced, switches in MDF and 4 IDF were replaced, user handheld devices software was upgraded, printers were reconfigured, each PC/Laptop was reconfigured. Entire process went so smooth that NFI Industries chose us to help them perform many small changes after the upgrade and each time we fulfilled all obligations and exceeded expectations.