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 Network Headlines Newspaper's Great Success |
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By Mona R. Litt
News doesn't stop happening just because a publication's network has gone down. So it's crucial for The Seattle Times' Margaret McDonald to make sure its network remains reliable and stays a few steps ahead of the industry. "We simply cannot afford any unnecessary downtime in such a time-intensive industry," says McDonald, a senior network systems analyst at the daily. "I can't think of a time in six years when we had an unplanned outage." This reliability comes from having one Bay Networks BCN router supporting business operations and another handling publishing functions.
Bay Networks BCN routers and BayStack 350FHD switches keep the flow of vital information going through 100BASE-T connections distributed to departmental servers and 56-Kbps dial-up and T1 connections to m ore than 30 subsidiaries and satellite offices as well as the paper's printing plant in Bothell, Wash., McDonald says. The newspaper will migrate from direct-connect terminals to network computers for faster communication from all parts of the company within the next three years, McDonald reports. Videoconferencing, also planned for soon, will prove extremely cost-effective because it will let employees deal with vendors directly over the network, rather than incur travel expenses. A large part of The Seattle Times' network encompasses the company's intranet and Web page. The intranet runs on a Compaq Computer Corp. ProSignia server with Novell IntranetWare software, McDonald explains. Each department has its own Web page on the intranet Web server, where it posts pertinent data for employees. For instance, the IS page includes work charts, project details, a telephone directory and handbook. ISS' (Internet Security Systems) firewall, Web and systems scanning tools secure private data on the intran et, while Cisco Systems PIX firewall protects the corporate network intranet. Web development tools include Microsoft Corp.'s FrontPage 97 and O'Reilly and Associates' PolyForm, according to McDonald. The classifieds and editorial departments, two of the company's largest, use Atex software systems to perform overall layout, article composition and advertisement creation. Classifieds will upgrade to Atex Enterprise systems running on SunSPARC servers and PCs by 1999, McDonald estimates. The Seattle Times also uses several custom applications, including the Zenda back-end classifieds reporting system (using Oracle Corp. databases); Boone advertising tracking system (using Paradox); Single Copy, for circulation sales tracking and the employee database and in-house classifieds. The network systems group, McDonald says, has scheduled a Lotus Notes pilot program to coincide with the relocation of a third of the company and necessary upgrades. For more information on The Seattle Times or to see its news coverage, visit its Web site at www.seattletimes.com. |
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