About the Client

Founded in 1981, BearCom is America’s only nationwide wireless equipment dealer and integrator of two-way radios (walkie-talkies), handling equipment sales, rentals, leasing, systems consulting and design, installation, and service. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, BearCom has 29 branch offices and 10 certified service centers. With 30,000 customers, primary fulfillment and support are handled at their 92,000-square-foot facility in Dallas. BearCom is Motorola Solution’s largest dealer worldwide.

Challenges the Client Faced

As part of their upgrade process, BearCom planned to move to the latest release of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, migrate to a new tools release, and do a complete hardware refresh. BearCom also needed to move to the latest release of Vertex, Inc.’s tax software for support of 9-digit zip codes, which was only certified to run on the latest release of EnterpriseOne. Before moving forward, BearCom needed to identify a highly experienced partner that could assist them with their aggressive plans.

GSI's Solution

After evaluating several vendors, BearCom decided to move forward with GSI, Inc. based on their extensive experience with JD Edwards and their innovative approach. “GSI’s plan allowed BearCom to be a major part of the upgrade team, running code changes and training, leveraging our strengths and saving considerable time and money”, stated Stephen McClenney, Director of IT. “GSI also did a complete knowledge transfer with our staff during the upgrade.” During the implementation, GSI was instrumental in providing a best practices approach for addressing BearCom’s hardware configuration. This included a new IBM iSeries, 6 IBM WebSphere servers on virtual machines, Citrix XenServer Advanced for virtualization and load balancing, as well as other enhancements. Stephen McClenney, Director of IT, was pleased with the results achieved by GSI. “The entire upgrade process only took six months from start to finish. In fact, the project was delivered substantially ahead of schedule and significantly under budget.”