Menu
Founded in 1972, Chapel Steel is a steel plate distributor and service center with headquarters in suburban Philadelphia, and five additional offices in the United States and Canada.
In the mid-1990s, lacking IT staff, Chapel Steel enlisted a phone dealer to provide fractional T1 lines and routers for branch-to-headquarters connectivity, replicating this system during expansion across the US and Canada. However, the company still faced IT challenges, operating a traditional distributed IT environment with workstations and servers at branches and a mainframe at headquarters. By the mid-2000s, Chapel Steel required an easier and cost-effective solution to manage its IT infrastructure.
Infradapt proposed a phased approach, including migration to a centralized environment at Chapel Steel’s headquarters and leveraging a Terminal Server infrastructure for better control and manageability. Through periodic meetings, Infradapt introduced new technologies, such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), to address user-specific challenges. This approach enabled Chapel Steel to upgrade software, enhance performance, and increase security at a lower cost than the existing alternatives.
Chapel Steel COO Pat Jones explained, “It made sense for us to stop the race of buying more bandwidth, investing in more hardware, and growing our own data center… We chose, instead, to leverage Infradapt’s private cloud for our needs. With Virtual Desktops, we are able to achieve greater desktop flexibility… while still maintaining control over the desktop and cost controls.”
A key aspect of Chapel Steel’s relationship with Infradapt is their high level of knowledge, skill, responsiveness, and customer service. Pat emphasized the availability and approachability of Infradapt’s Partners as a major benefit, stating, “Infradapt is not afraid to work hard, and really understands customer service… With Infradapt we could get the Infradapt decision makers on the phone if needed-day or night!”
Pat’s positive experience with Antonio Haddad, who previously worked on their account at a phone dealer, led to continued collaboration when Haddad founded Infradapt. Pat said, “He was responsive when he was part of an earlier company, and I was very confident that he would take it even a step further once he went out on his own. He’s proven to do just that, and we couldn’t be more pleased.”
