Ewart Chain Group

About the project

Ewart Chain is the oldest chain manufacturer in the world and the name "Ewart" is synonymous with industrial chain products worldwide. Ewart approached Lennox IT to help them modernize their IT infrastructure whilst also reducing their overall costs and through our Pay-as-you-go package we have been working with them to do just that.

IT Support
Server Management
Managed Backups
IT Consultancy

Visit Website

IT Support

When we were first introduced to Ewart Chain their primary focus was to modernize their ageing Windows XP environment and get a grip on the various IT systems in the business which were currently completely unmanaged/unsupported - including their emails, backups, VPN, and main line-of-business application called "Syteline ERP". Over the years Ewart Chain has realigned their business away from manufacturing towards resale / retail chain services and so they were also suffering a large burden of costs associated with older IT systems which they no longer had such need for.

Lennox IT introduced a program of refurbishing and replacing older workstations with Windows 7 machines, spreading out the cost over several months. We installed our managed backup system across the full site including their email server, Syteline server, and main file server. We also introduced a program of off-site backups which are run on a nightly basis and contain the core company data.

Lennox IT are still proud to be Ewart Chain's only IT Support vendor and we currently supply all their day-to-day support needs via our Pay-as-you-go support package.

IT Consultancy

When Lennox IT first start working with Ewart Chain one of the major hurdles involved their key line-of-business application called "Syteline ERP". Syteline is a large, enterprise grade software package capable of managing all aspects of a large, multi-national manufacturing and supply business. Unfortunately all this comes at a price and Ewart Chain discovered that their costs for maintaining the software were growing far too large for the current position of the business - especially since their business focus had changed and the software no longer suited their needs.

Syteline was also creating a barrier for upgrading other areas of the company's IT since it was reliant on an ageing Windows XP/2000 environment and other IT support companies had been unable to migrate the application into a modern Windows environment.

Lennox IT performed a full site assessment with Ewart Chain and helped them to isolate their key business requirements and to devise a migration plan away from Syteline. We decided to use Pegasus Operations as a modern, cost effective alternative to Syteline and we installed 2 new HP ProLiant servers to run the software. We also introduced Ewart to a local consulting firm who were able to install the Pegasus software, provide training, and help the company begin the process of transitioning from Syteline.

Whilst this transition is occurring Lennox IT have worked with Ewarts to modernise their environment around Syteline and we have allowed the company to finally move away from Windows XP to Windows 7 whilst still maintaining backwards compatibility with the older Syteline client software - something other IT Support vendors were unable to do for them.

What they have to say...

"Ewart Chain has changed so much over the last 5 years and as the manufacturing industry grows more competitive we have had to find new solutions to keep Ewart relevant and maintain the strength of our iconic brand. The flexibility and expertise of Lennox IT has been a huge benefit to us in this respect and they have helped us greatly to modernise our IT and regain control over our IT Systems"

- Mike Horton, Company Owner