The ability to manage the secure flow and storage of sensitive financial information is imperative to the success of AmeriCredit Corp. With about 90 branch offices in the United States, AmeriCredit services more than one million active loan customers and funds approximately 15,000 loans per month for over 10,000 franchised auto dealers. Building a sophisticated network operations center (NOC) to monitor the corporate data network was therefore critical.
In November 2002, the Whitlock Group, a systems integration firm based in Richmond, Virginia, completed a NOC that enables AmeriCredit to monitor the status of all of its remote servers and locations via graphic depictions displayed on a 20’ x 5’ (6m x 1.5m) video wall. The large display enables operators to monitor a high level overview of the system and any changes that may affect it.
“We’re spread out across the country and we need the ability to forward out to managers critical information that might impact our ability to do business,” said Jess Whitfield, senior network monitoring engineer, AmeriCredit. “We now have more flexibility to resize and rearrange images across the screen based on issues that arise. We are able to view a greater amount of pertinent information on a larger scale, in real time. It’s made our people much more efficient.”
The video wall is comprised of 12, 50” Christie GraphXMASTER CX50-100U DLP video cubes arranged in a 2x6 array and controlled by two Christie FRC-5000 display wall controllers. One FRC-5000 is the primary controller while the other is redundant to ensure optimum performance in a mission critical environment.
“The FRC turns twelve screens into one virtual desktop so you can spread an image across them all or have multiple images with multiple applications running,” said Craig Taylor, account manager, Whitlock Group. “When you need a display wall controller that won’t fail in a mission critical environment, the FRC-5000 is the one to use. Everything’s hot swappable.”
The projection cubes are mounted together on a black laminate custom base to match the workstation consoles and create the appearance of a seamless video wall. It was not only important for the images to align but the seams and edges to match up perfectly so that it would be possible to run a finger along the wall and not feel any physical imperfections. To achieve this, the screens had to be mounted within half a millimeter of each other.
With an uneven cement floor to work with, the Whitlock Group had redesigned a base with exact specifications to achieve the desired result.
AmeriCredit had a control room previously, which contained four 27” computer monitors mounted to a wall and that was used by approximately four people. As the company grew, more people were added to cover the different aspects of the business and more space and better technology was required. DLP was the technology of choice to achieve higher resolution and the Whitlock Group demonstrated how a wall of projection cubes could be built.
“Our most important considerations were reliability, maintenance and size constraints,” said Whitfield. “The display is up 24 hours a day seven days a week so we had to have technology that would be reliable in a mission critical situation. By using cubes, which fit into a smaller area, we didn’t have to dedicate a room for rear projection. Also, the data we display is all high resolution making the Christie cubes with DLP technology the most effective solution.”
“Decisions vital to an organization are made based on what operators view on a video wall,” said Gary Werner, senior sales manager, control rooms, Christie. At Christie, we’re constantly striving to provide companies like AmeriCredit with sophisticated projection solutions that enable organizations to view and analyze a greater amount of detailed information enabling them to react to situations in an efficient and effective manner.”
Behind the main control room area is a conference room that looks out onto the NOC. Mounted on the ceiling of this room is a Christie Vivid LX33 fixed installation LCD projector. With its whisper-quiet operation (at 35dB) and fully digital and analog signal capabilities, the LX33 is a bright tool used for multimedia presentations outlining AmeriCredit’s full capabilities and strengths.
As a Fortune 1000, publicly traded company, many investors and analysts have toured the facility, and the video wall has provided a distinctive “wow” factor for AmeriCredit.