“Wellington Airport is a critical piece of infrastructure for the Wellington region which needs to be operational 24 x 7 x 365 days a year. ACSData developed and delivered an innovative, cost effective, truly diverse network link solution for the airport after we were told it was not possible by an incumbent supplier. Moving to a new network provider was a big decision but the business benefits were too large to ignore. The migration was seamless and the project was professionally delivered on time and to budget. We have never looked back having ACSData as a supplier and love their customer focused, innovative approach to our business challenges.“
Intergen and Empired look to ACSData to provide their growth connectivity
Growing an IT solutions provider from 140 staff in Australia to almost 1000 employees globally within 4 years is no mean feat. It has been a long and complicated task for the Empired IT team, led by Paul Cina, to help bring the 5 disparate organisations and associated infrastructure together into a cohesive company. The acquisitions, including Intergen Limited, in line with the company’s focus on Microsoft based solutions for corporate and government customers across Australia, has now taken Empired to a global stage with acquired offices located in New Zealand, the USA and 5 cities around Australia.
The consolidation and office rationalisation required posed some challenges for the team in terms of ensuring constant connectivity and communication for the customers, the new and existing staff as well as to their Data Centres, SaaS providers and Microsoft. Suddenly faced with multiple telecommunications (ISP and WAN) providers, varying contract terms and lengths combined with administration of the mottled services not only posed challenges to the budget but also the integrity of their services.
With these disparate links from multiple providers, Paul and his team knew that they would have to consolidate and do so in line with the facilities and management of the mergers. The IT team used AGILE methodology to plan and execute to their strategy, splitting the requirements into mini-projects to ensure service continuity. Paul and his team knew they needed to standardise their network and ensure that their communication and connectivity strategy was repeatable and re-deployable as they move offices and grow the business. Taking into consideration an increased use of SAAS and PAAS, Empired would require a provider that was well connected to other cloud- vendors and could ensure a smooth transition to the cloud.
Whilst the need for Express Route was not immediate, it was forecasted and added to the list of requirements for the new provider. Having moved from ISDN to SIP trunks meant the new provider must also be reliable with full redundancy through true diversity to ensure 100% uptime for their Service Desk telephony.
Whilst reviewing the existing ISP and WAN providers for Empired and the acquisitions, they were introduced to ACSData, the provider of global redundant and diverse ISP and WAN services for their most recent acquisition, Intergen. Intergen’s satisfaction with the services provided by ACSData, including BGP routing, QoS and the low latency connectivity to Microsoft in the US and Australia meant ACSData would be a consideration as the ISP provider for the rest of the new Empired offices. With the project complexity and cost savings in mind, Empired’s IT and finance team wanted to ensure they were going to get “the best bang for buck in their new relationship”.
After a full analysis of possible Telecoms partners, ACSData was chosen as the ISP provider for all the Empired offices. The ACSData network engineers began work with Paul and the team to provide a seamless cutover from the disparate providers and links to the newly designed, repeatable and re-deployable connectivity solution. Despite the varied contracts and co-ordination with the facilities amalgamation and staff movements, the cut over for all the offices took less than 12 months. With excellent planning in conjunction with ACSData, Empired were able to mitigate any major risks ahead of time and ensured no outages during the execution. The only challenge came as the IT team realised they urgently required incremental IPV4 addresses for one of the new locations. Working with the ACSData team, this was resolved within 24 hours.
“Working with ACSData has ensured our staff and customers benefit from fast, reliable links, enabling our business to not only function more efficiently, but also service our customers more effectively. ACSData is a vendor that looks out for our needs and is responsive.“
“Pacific Radiology has been a customer of ACSData’s since 2005. Their customer service and flexibility have been invaluable in allowing our teleradiology functions to be operated across New Zealand as well as globally. In areas where other ISP’s have simply said “it cant be done”, ACSData have made it happen. There are many of our branches that simply wouldn’t have been feasible without their assistance. For organisations wanting to work with the best then we would highly recommend ACSData”.
www.wellingtonairport.co.nz
