Case Study: Trend Windows achieves millions in savings and a 30% capacity increase with Stromasys CHARON-VAX

With CHARON-VAX, Trend Windows saves millions and increases capacity by 30%

Trend Windows & Doors, Australia’s largest privately owned window and door manufacturer, was running all critical operations on an aging VAX 7840 (mid-1970s) whose capacity had been reached. Rewriting their legacy applications would have cost an estimated three to four million dollars, and buying another old VAX risked reliability issues and would not work with modern storage—so they needed to move platforms without changing code, the user interface, Rdb access or LAT-connected manufacturing devices.

United Business Solutions (UBS) and Oriel Technologies implemented Stromasys CHARON‑VAX on an AMD-based HP ProLiant DL385 after a month of testing in HP’s lab and a one‑weekend migration with minimal downtime. The virtual VAX increased capacity by about 30%, saved millions versus redevelopment, sped processing and nightly backups, enabled modern storage and Telstra hosting, freed physical space, reduced the carbon footprint, and is expected to meet Trend’s needs for another decade with easy future upgrades.

Trend Windows

Ray Schroder

IT Manager