Country Music Network Kicks Up Its Heels To a ccess a gif file of the Centerfoldgraphic, click here. It may take some time to load in your browser! To download an Adobe Acrobat .pdf format version of the Centerfold graphic, click here. By Mona R. Litt   Singers like Shania Twain, Reba McEntire and Garth Brooks bring down the house every time. But when you manage the network in the organization showcasing such singers, you want to make sure that's all that's brought down. So Gaylord Entertainment Co. in Nashville, Tenn., had to have a network that could grow with the company. Gaylord owns several country music entertainment outlets, including the renowned Grand Ole Opry, Opryland Hotel a nd Convention Center, Opryland Theme Park and several cable TV and radio stations. "We have to keep up with new technologies and demands," explains Doug Whatley, Gaylord's supervisor of LAN development. "It's a sink-or-swim situation. You have to keep up or be left behind." Since its 2,000 employees cater to the public and perform everyday office functions, Gaylord depends on the quality and quantity of its network applications. "We're constantly adapting our network to meet the ever-changing needs for the applications we need to use," Whatley says. Workers at all retail locations, from the hotel to the theme park, use IBM Corp.'s Infogenesis point-of-sale application for customer transactions. The customized Gaylord Entertainment Co. Revenue (GECR) application resides on the IBM ES/9000 mainframe and keeps track of ticket booth transactions. Staffers use Lotus Notes for project management and communications and Novell GroupWise for e-mail. For file and print sharing, they use Novell NetWare. Novell Host Printer enables mainframe documents to be printed on any of the network-attached printers. WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 a re used for word processing and spreadsheets. SupportMagic's Magic Helpdesk, a centralized helpdesk management software package, and Xtend, a telephone operator's interface program, run on Pervasive Software's Btrieve, a client/server database engine for LAN applications. With Magic Helpdesk, employees key in their computer problems and the software automatically routes the complaint to the appropriate support person. The software also tracks the number of calls and how quickly the staff responds. Xtend connects the switchboard to the computer system. When people want to reach a hotel guest or employee, the operator can access information from one terminal rather than transfer the call to several other people. Guests can call one central operator and request room service or other information. For PC users, NetSoft NS/400 provides terminal emulation, and Netscape Navigator and Micro soft Internet Explorer offer Internet access. From their networked PCs, employees access sales and marketing information from the mainframe and IBM AS/400 by using Visual Basic and Access. Gaylord's network includes several Token-Ring connections with Olicom OC-3610 Control Statistical Access Units (CAUs) attached. Hewlett-Packard Co. OpenView helps identify the location of a malfunctioning workstation. The company's new Web site, at www.country. com, provides country music enthusiasts with information on upcoming events and general details concerning the music and lifestyle. Whatley plans to set up an intranet in a month or so.

Updated February 21, 1997