Simon and Shuster was an on-going and extensive relationship that lasted several years beginning in late 1997. And amazingly enough involved Managed Services.  Yes it was possible to manage computer remotely in 1997, although not as sophisticated as today it worked and Tymor was one of the first to try to bring this technology to the market. (We still have a copy of the business plan to prove it!). The first big project was a contract to service and maintain 50+ laptop computers used by the professors of the Wharton School of Business.  This began in May of 1998. Some at Tymor remember it as being the most transparent and trouble-free support contract ever. The reason was Tymor’s use of advanced (back then anyway) support technology. There’s just nothing to write about. Everything ran smooth and pretty.

This lead to the project to outfit an entire school! The Project was the soup to nuts outfitting of Our Lady of Las Vegas Catholic School. This meant servers, workstations. Network cabling, electronics and everything in between.  Once again, the frequent flyer miles piled up with the need to ship equipment and computers and have top personnel on site for the physical installation. The streamlining of management of the system, once installed, was made considerably easier due to Tymor’s willingness to provide clients with the complete capabilities of IT systems, not just what you “paid” for. Using remote system management capabilities meant that the schools new system could be monitored and tweaked without a “truck-roll” (which in this case meant 3000 miles!) Not bad for 1998, huh?

After this, in August of 1998 Tymor, as a result of its achievements, was asked to manage a significant number of Philadelphia public schools for Simon & Shuster’s subsidiary, Computer Curriculum Contractors. Once again, it was a clean and smooth operation with a surprisingly small number of glitches. (Well, not counting the chewing gum in the CD-Rom drive or icky keyboard syndrome). When Simon and Shuster then needed some one to manage the installation of a new security system for Eckerd Drug Stores, nationally, Tymor was IT. (Clever, huh?) This was a very extensive project that covered several months during early 2000. In addition to the Data link lines and equipment installations, configuring the data protocols and failover contingencies where significant challenges that needed to be met. The security provider chosen was ADT. Tymor worked closely with ADT and Eckerd staff to insure that once the system was armed there would be no after-install issues. There weren’t.