Since 1978, the Association of Continuing International Studies (ACIS) has been committed to helping students broaden their horizons by exploring new countries and experiencing different cultures through educational tours to Europe and the rest of the world. In that time, ACIS has led more than 400,000 students to foreign lands. Although travel is at the heart of ACIS's business, senior vice president Steve Painter actually wanted to cut down on travel-his own work-related travel.

Painter is in charge of "all things technical" for ACIS. This includes 22 Windowsâ NT/2000 servers spread out over five locations across the United States. Part of Painter's responsibilities include trips from the main office in Boston to sites throughout the U.S. to check on remote computer systems to assure that they are running properly. Painter wanted to reduce the length and frequency of these trips. As Painter puts it, "San Francisco is a great place to visit, but going there to work is a day out of your life, a day you'll never get back."

Painter found a solution to his computer dilemma from a Portsmouth, NH company called Ecora Software. Since purchasing Ecora's product, which produces written reports on how his 22 NT servers across the entire system are configured, Painter's business travel has lessened, enabling him to spend more time at home attuned to critical tasks in the main office and saving ACIS money in both travel and manpower expenses. "Ecora is a cost-reducer," says Painter. "Not only do we make fewer off-site visits, but Ecora probably shaves a day off the time we have to spend at each remote office visit. With Ecora we don't need to spend a day crawling the network looking for potential problems. Now we know the state of the network before we get there."

Ecora has developed the only product that automatically documents the IT infrastructure. In minutes, Ecora's IT Auditors enable CIOs and system managers to print out natural-language reports that capture the state and configuration of servers on a system. With only a few clicks of a mouse, Ecora prints out an easy-to-read report, with graphics, that clearly explains how every server is set up to function. Ecora offers products for WindowsÒ NT/2000, LotusÒ Domino, OracleÒ and MicrosoftÒ Exchange servers.

ACIS has only a handful of people in its technology department and Ecora enables each to be more effective administrators and decision-makers. The documentation generated by Ecora provides important information to help ACIS's IT employees quickly make mission critical decisions that formerly took "days to figure out." In addition, ACIS uses Ecora for its disaster recovery plan and to "head off potential problems." With Ecora, Painter spends more time in the Boston office and feels his staff is smarter and better prepared for unexpected glitches. Beyond maximizing his time, Painter is impressed by Ecora's ease-of-use. "I like that you don't have to administer or upgrade your software with Ecora," says Painter. "Ecora is really an inspired piece of technology. I'm not giving it up."ACIS can be found on the Web at www.acis.com.