Client
The Client is one of the world's largest brewers with brewing interests or distribution agreements in over 60 countries across five continents.

Project
The Client wished to implement new global applications in order to standardise processes across their many offices, share best practice knowledge amongst the whole group and reduce the overall cost of IT systems. The aim was to give each Business Unit access to global business applications hosted in four regional data centres across the world.

Xantus was engaged to conduct a network study and profile the new global business applications on the Client’s network infrastructure. Xantus was then asked to develop a network strategy which would support the planned business applications rollout.

The network strategy outlined an optimised network utilisation approach which reduced upgrade costs through the choice of different network technologies for different needs. The result means a reduction in the Client’s network upgrade costs by approximately 10% over three years.

Approach
Phase 1 - Profiling the applications
Xantus employed its proven methodology to profile the business applications and calculate the bandwidth required for both web-based and client/server applications.

Some variables were difficult to predict, so theoretical estimates were validated by physical measurement. This provided a greater degree of confidence in the calculations.

Phase 2 - Validating the architecture
Xantus reviewed the global network architecture and the supporting infrastructure in order to determine whether they had the capacity required to accommodate these new applications.

Xantus' understanding of the way web applications deliver performance to the user meant that several technological options could be considered, prior to validating the infrastructure required for the global applications.

Phase 3 - Selecting the type of network
For guaranteed performance and service levels, most companies would normally deliver global applications using a private (MPLS) network. However such networks become expensive as the bandwidth increases and there is an opportunity to significantly reduce network costs by using internet VPNs. However, the potential saving has to be traded off against the potential service level impact. In addition to this, the cost of each option will depend on the service provider and the diversity of the locations.

Xantus’ analysis indicated that the most appropriate solution for the Client was to start with a hybrid network, making use of both MPLS (for transactional applications) and internet VPN connections (for batch-based traffic such as email). This was found to be significantly cheaper over a 3-5 year period. This approach gives the Client the flexibility to migrate more applications to the internet in the future to further reduce costs, whilst maintaining a smaller private MPLS network with guaranteed service levels for the most critical applications.

Having successfully completed the study and the network strategy, Xantus was asked to implement the pilot of the new internet VPNs for email traffic in the first Business Units in Russia and Romania, prior to the roll out to the rest of the business globally. Xantus then implementing a WAN acceleration technology to optimise application performance by compressing and caching network traffic.

Benefits
The Client expects to save 10% on its network upgrade costs over the next three years due to the migration of email traffic to internet VPN connections.

The network capacity planning will ensure that the new business applications have sufficient bandwidth to perform effectively and ensure they achieve their goal of standardising business process across their global Business Units.

Feedback
The client stated that Xantus’ market experience was a real value-add to the project. It enabled effective assessment of the situation and a thorough understanding of requirements.

The Client’s Global Business Systems Manager, commented “the end result was practically focussed - it was clear what was needed to be done and what would be the best way forward - it enabled us to take something that we could use”.

More Information
For more information please contact Catherine Sanders at Xantus on 0161 495 2330 or email catherine.sanders@xantus.co.uk