Daimler Chrysler

Company: Ipswitch Inc.Customer: Daimler ChryslerSubmitted by: MCC InternationalDate: January 2000(GERMANY) When one of Europe’s leading automobile manufacturers needed a solution for moving graphics files from high-end CAD/CAM workstations to desktop PCs, Reinhard Schmaderer head of IT at DaimlerChrysler’s transport division, reached for a simple yet highly effective solution, WS_FTP from Ipswitch Inc.”There has always been a need for graphics produced by the design engineers to be used in Word and PowerPoint documents,” explained Reinhard. “WS_FTP proved itself to be the most efficient means of transferring the bitmap files from the workstation to the design engineer’s PC.

Before the introduction of WS_FTP, the design engineers had to send images from the workstation to the central host and then fetch them from the host using the PC.Now, using WS_FTP, they can access the folders in their workstation or even other workstations directly from their PC, and copy the files over. WS_FTP shows the folder structure of the workstation in one window, and the folders on the PC hard disk in a second – a few clicks of the mouse are all that’s needed to transfer them over making it much faster than other methods. In order for the workstations to be able to be accessed via WS_FTP, the IP address of the workstation and the user name of the user as well as his/her password must be entered just once in the ‘Session Profile’. It is effortless, secure and very reliable.

WS_FTP was introduced across the whole transport division after DaimlerChrysler standardised its desktops in 1997, rolling out Windows NT4 with a standard software configuration on 600 PCs. Design engineers had already been working with WS_FTP, prior to its mass installation so the decision, according to Reinhard, was not hard to make: “We decided on WS_FTP because it is so simple to use. We have never had any problems with the software, and we use it every day.”