Vodafone Ireland has completed a EUR2.2m upgrade of its IT infrastructure, and the mobile operator is outsourcing management of its network as part of the contract.
The upgrade covers the expansion of Vodafone’s local and wide area network as well as the installation of wireless links at the company’s new headquarters in Leopardstown. The Dublin-based systems integrator, LAN Communications has been contracted to provide the new infrastructure and is managing the network from its own operations centre located in Ballymount, Dublin.
At the network core, LAN Communications installed two backbone Cisco Catalyst 6500 switches, designed to address the requirements for Gigabit Ethernet speeds and high availability. These are connected via Gigabit uplinks to nineteen distributed wiring closets, each housing a Catalyst 4006 chassis switch, providing a safe, flexible networking environment that can easily accommodate future technologies.
Commenting on the choice of hardware and integration supplier, Pat Moynihan, IT director with Vodafone Ireland said: ‘We already had a strong relationship with Cisco and LAN Communications and we knew their products and track records’.
Almost half of the operator’s staff are involved in around-the-clock customer care, which created the need for a solid and reliable communications system. Users at Vodafone now have 10/100Mbit/s switched speeds to the desktop, Moynihan added. Network bottlenecks have been eliminated and application response times have improved significantly. ‘The main thing was that we had capacity and resilience,’ said Moynihan. ‘I needed to be able to support all of the employees and keep downtime to a minimum.’
Although all of the desks in the new headquarters have cable connections to the network, the idea behind installing a wireless LAN was that it could facilitate employees with laptops. They can now effectively ‘roam’ within the building and remain connected to the network without having to have a device physically attached to a network port. Executives can now give presentations to their colleagues in meeting rooms using their own portable systems.
A further five Cisco Catalyst 7600 switch/routers have been deployed throughout the network, linking Vodafone’s headquarters with locations in Clonskeagh, Dundalk, Galway and Cork. Last year the company also acquired the City Reach data centre in Clonshaugh and it has centralised much of its IT infrastructure to that facility. LAN Communications has installed a Catalyst 7600 at the data centre.
According to Moynihan, another benefit of the outsourcing deal is that it will allow Vodafone’s own IT staff to concentrate on strategy issues such as planning future capacity and maximising bandwidth. LAN Communications provides second and third level support on network-related issues, as well as advice and implementation of Vodafone’s IT strategies. Through its Network Operations Centre, LAN Communications can monitor Vodafone’s data network performance through a transparent set of statistics covering network uptime, CPU utilisation and bandwidth usage. Vodafone’s network is monitored and in the event of a fault, text message alerts can be sent to LAN Communications staff.
15/05/2003
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers