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Uecomm delivers unique resilience to Toyota Financial Services
15 February 2008 - Toyota Financial Services, one of Australia’s leading financiers, has chosen leading next generation networks provider, Uecomm, to design and deliver a comprehensive Ethernet VLAN solution to optimise the resiliency of its existing infrastructure.With net receivables exceeding $4.3 billion and responsibility for critical business information, Toyota Financial Services sought a single vendor who could offer an integrated and secure solution to support its entire back-end suite of IT, Internet and VoIP technology.
"We could have gone through multiple vendors; one for our voice needs and one for our IT infrastructure," explained Mark Gosling, IT Manager of Toyota Financial Services. "Instead we chose one partner who could confidently offer support for both sets of requirements, and inturn we got more for less," he said.
Toyota Financial Services has various offices across the country employing several hundred staff. The multi-site nature of the business with its head office in Sydney and regional offices in Woolaware Bay, Townsville, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth requires the business’ IT and VoIP capabilities to be 'live' and robust all times.
"Reliability is of critical importance to our business," said Mr Gosling. "Therefore complete confidence in the strength of the network was key when reviewing our network requirements, including finding an end-to-end solution that would eliminate potential business outages across our various sites and operations."
Mr Gosling said previously the back-end of the Toyota Financial Services operation only had single connections to and from the main IT site.
"The final result across the Toyota Financial Services Network was in fact quite unique, with Uecomm developing a comprehensive and watertight design which brings Toyota Financial Services business locations together securely, and at suitable capacity.
To ensure 100 per cent resiliency and to minimise outages, Ethernet VLANs were set up across the network for normal day-to-day use, to back-up the main infrastructure site and to also provide seamless connectivity to the disaster recovery site.
The Uecomm design and approach has delivered an easy-to-use, cost-effective high-bandwidth solution which addresses the business’ mandatory network needs.
"The new solution has really given us bang for our buck," said Mr Gosling. "And the simplicity of the outcome means we can confidently focus on internal IT matters and not be concerned about the network connectivity and it’s day-to-day performance."
"Interestingly there is a growing demand from CIOs to look for flexibility in design to meet business needs, rather than just speed," said Brendan Park, Uecomm’s Director of Strategy. "Business in Australia is wanting a carrier who listens to a customer and provides a solution that matches what they need, not what a vendor wants to sell them."According to a recent 2007 survey of Australia’s leading CIOs, the expectations of the financial, technological and other business benefits for network infrastructure are evolving as convergence technology matures in the marketplace.
"CIOs now acknowledge that technology gains such as increased security, capacity or reliability do have economic benefits," concluded Mr Park. "Companies are moving towards less traditional return-on-investment assessments of IT spending; now acknowledging that indirect technology improvements, such as network upgrades, do add financial value to the business."
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