CASE STUDY

Extreme Packets Uses Versiv™ with LinkWare™ Live to Meet its Need for Speed in Cable Testing

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At a Glance

Customer: Extreme Packets

Industry: IT Infrastructure Cabling

Location: Lubbock, Texas

Challenge:

Extreme Packets completes cabling projects large and small, providing computer network installation services to universities, businesses, and commercial real estate construction. Since its beginning more than 15 years ago, the company has developed deep expertise in cabling, while keeping long-term client relationships. As it has grown and looked to maintain a competitive edge, Extreme Packets saw an opportunity to excel in two key areas: completing jobs more quickly and establishing a simpler way of managing cable test results for its customers.

Result:

Upgrading to the Versiv™ DSX-5000 and LinkWare™ Live has dramatically reduced the time it takes to get to systems acceptance. Extreme Packets has reduced its individual cable certification times by 79%, and with LinkWare Live, the company can share test results with clients as soon as they have been uploaded, saving time and allowing clients to track testing progress. Using Versiv and LinkWare Live, Extreme Packets has significantly reduced overall project completion time by as much as 70%. In many cases, a project that would normally take 12 hours to complete with their old testers now takes as little as four hours to finish.

Product:

LinkWare™ Live with DSX-5000

On This Page

• Overview
• Challenges
• Solution
• Results

Overview

Headquartered in Lubbock, Texas, Extreme Packets has been providing low voltage cable installation to businesses, universities and apartment complexes across Texas for more than 15 years. With an experienced technical crew, 90 percent of the company's business comes from new construction in apartment complexes, the oil construction industry, student housing and hospital buildings. Catering to projects of various sizes, from 30 cable drops up to 1,300 in a single project, Extreme Packets takes pride in its ability to cultivate long-term client relationships and grow its business through positive customer references.

Challenges

Large-scale construction projects, such as college dormitories or hospital extensions, can involve thousands of cable drops at a single location. Because testing and verifying all of the cables can be very time consuming, speed and efficiency are paramount to ensure the overall construction project stays on track. To meet customer needs and stay competitive, Extreme Packets was motivated to find new ways to complete projects quickly.

In addition to needing speedier testing, the Extreme Packets team needed to avoid losing the test data once tests had been completed, which could result in re-work, wasted time, and project delays. Because test result data on a given device can be mislabeled, corrupted, lost, or even stolen, finding ways to organize, save, and store data was a primary concern.

Solution

Given Extreme Packets' focus on large-scale projects at new construction sites where speed and efficiency are of the essence, the company upgraded to a Versiv DSX-5000 CableAnalyzer as soon as it hit the market. The team then integrated Versiv's companion cloud platform, LinkWare Live, into the testing workflow.

Results

Using the Versiv DSX-5000 CableAnalyzer in conjunction with LinkWare Live, the Extreme Packets team has not only finished jobs faster under tighter deadlines, they have improved how they save and share their test results with their clients. While this has simplified projects, it has also allowed the company to maintain a competitive advantage by passing on convenience and savings to its clients.

Extreme Packets customers also find the accessibility of the test results to be beneficial. "One of the biggest advantages of using LinkWare™ Live with our DSX-5000 is that test results can be shared with our clients as soon as they have been uploaded," said Dustan Buckley, co-owner of Extreme Packets since 2002. "This saves us time and ensures that test results data remain secure, while allowing our clients to see how their projects are progressing. One of our biggest clients, a large university in Texas, regularly downloads the results into its own database to keep accurate records of cable status for its student dorms and other facilities."

Using the Versiv DSX-5000, Extreme Packets reports that testing and certification times per cable have dropped as much as 79%. The seconds saved have added up quickly. A job that would have previously taken 12 hours now typically takes just four hours, allowing technicians to finish a job in just a morning or afternoon. "Using the DSX-5000 with the LinkWare Live cloud service has paid for itself three times over since we bought it in 2013," continued Buckley. "On a jobsite, the most valuable thing is saving time and manpower. With the Versiv solution we have the confidence to schedule and finish jobs more efficiently."

And with data loss as an always-present concern, Extreme Packets is using LinkWare Live to save test data to the cloud, providing quick and easy access to test results to both the team and their clients. Not only does this simplify sharing the test results with clients, it also eliminates the danger having the data corrupted, lost or improperly labeled. The team also found LinkWare Live to be intuitive and straightforward – allowing the team to produce detailed, yet easy to understand, reports without the need for extensive training.

"The LinkWare Live cloud service is a great add-on to our DSX-5000. Together they have all the features we currently need, and the flexibility to keep up with our business as it grows," commented Buckley. "We save time and effort, which helps keep our customers coming back for more. I couldn’t be happier with the results."