Jamaica's Ministry of Finance

Jamaica's Ministry of Finance functions as the government's fiscal manager. It is responsible for the macro-economic policy management of Jamaica's budget.

The Challenge

The process of setting and maintaining budgets calls for vast resources in terms of facts and figures; from analyzing past years performance to making future projections. This kind of complex administration is ideally suited to the application of computer systems and the Jamaican Ministry of Finance was quick to recognize the available technology, which would no doubt make its job a lot easier.

Originally, the Jamaican Ministry of Finance was using a variety of stand-alone personal computer systems for this task. Whilst providing a short-term solution, the installation had drawbacks in that resources could not be adequately shared throughout the department. It was also decided, that the department required enhanced performance from its computer systems. After an exhaustive review, leading Jamaican distributor MC Systems, completed the initial phase of a new computer installation at the Ministry of Finance.

The installation required the ability to network 180 user terminals giving them access to system host servers.

The Solution

Perle IOLAN+ terminal servers were sited at various distribution points throughout the building to network enable the user terminals and support multiple remote printers.

The Benefits

Each Perle IOLAN+ terminal server enables any combination of serial devices to be connected to the Ethernet backbone, providing host access and processing power where it is needed most.

The installation originally had 180 users on-line, but has the ability to accept over 300 via the Perle IOLAN+ terminal servers. The long-term goal, is to standardize on Unix applications over LANs for all Jamaican Government departments, each feeding into an X.25 gateway for wide area networked communications. Duncan Soares, Marketing Manager of MC Systems Limited comments on the choice of Perle IOLAN+ for the site, "Our reason for choosing Perle IOLAN+ servers was primarily cost and compatibility with SCO's TCP/IP. Additionally, Perle's ability to communicate on thick wire Ethernet and support remote printers gave it clear advantages over other products evaluated".