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“Macquarie Telecom has fostered a personal relationship with Wattyl, something we felt
was missing with previous providers. The resources they provide have been excellent and our
Account Management team have been responsive and dedicated.”
Brett Esra, Network Manager,
Wattyl Australia Pty Ltd.
Overview
As the leading Australian-owned paint manufacturer, Wattyl is a trusted brand with operations
in Australia and New Zealand.
Throughout the past century, Wattyl has produced numerous technologically advanced, market
leading products. Today, individuals, contract painters and industrial customers use these
products.
As the business experienced growth and change, Wattyl moved towards a convergent data solution
to meet its business needs, keeping the organisation connected as they expanded to new sites
and rolled out new services.
The Opportunity
In business since 1915, Wattyl employs over 1500 people throughout its 10-core manufacturing
and warehousing sites and 130 company outlets, predominantly servicing the trade sector.
Wattyl offers a broad product range with a number of new products researched and developed
each year. Over recent years, Wattyl has seen a restructure of its organisation to enable
a co-ordinated approach across brands and sectors. This includes ongoing improvements in manufacturing
and plant efficiency and enhanced planning systems to improve supply.
As with any company looking to remain a leader in its field, Wattyl aims to partner with
providers who allow the more effective use of resources as well as to contribute to the company’s
bottom line.
Wattyl had been running its computer systems on a frame relay network but through a competitive
tender process began serious evaluation of outsourcing to an IP network service provider.
The Macquarie Telecom solution offered a new IP data network with quality of service (QoS)
that eliminated serious and continued congestion at the best price/performance ratio.
Instrumental in winning the contract was Macquarie Telecom’s ability to provide Wattyl
with best-of-breed solutions as a result of its own data network infrastructure and its multi-carrier
relationships.
“Macquarie was selected because it provided the best bandwidth increase for the most affordable
price,” said John Croker, Wattyl’s CIO.
“The high standard of network traffic monitoring and reporting and the impressive security
of the managed IP network were also key contributing factors in Wattyl awarding the contract
to Macquarie.”
The Solution
In 2004, Wattyl found that Macquarie Telecom could cost effectively migrate their existing
frame relay network to a private IP network with point-to-point digital data service providing
high-quality, high-speed secure transmission combined with stringent service level guarantees
and detailed performance reporting capabilities.
The company needed to upgrade data communications across its Australian and New Zealand
offices. Under a co-location agreement, Wattyl also utilises Macquarie Telecom’s Secure Data
Centre. This provides multi-peering Internet broadband connectivity, managed security, complex
hosting and WAN integration as well as direct connectivity to Macquarie’s data network for
Wattyl’s web hosting and IBM System i5 ® based enterprise application disaster recovery systems.
Macquarie Telecom worked with Wattyl Australia Pty Limited to roll out a new IP network
to replace the frame network to its 10 core sites and is working to complete an interconnected
DSL network to the 130 sales outlets.
Critical to the solution was Macquarie’s ability to support Wattyl’s primary Enterprise
Application Server – an IBM System i5 ® which provides a range of services from ERP to CRM
to Manufacturing to Warehouse/Inventory Management and Finance.
Results
Wattyl has seen significant cost benefits from convergence. As new services were rolled
out, Wattyl has found an ever increasing need for more capacity on the WAN, including enhanced
picking systems dependent upon capability delivered through the Private IP network.
Wattyl now has a comprehensive scalable and secure data network using Private IP, DSL,
Dial In services, Internet services and co-location facilities in the Macquarie Telecom Data
Centre. 10 core sites and 86 of the outlets are connected to the Private IP Network with the
rest of the outlets to follow.
Wattyl’s primary Enterprise Application Server is an IBM System i5 ®, A centralised system
with a significant number of users attached. It is critical to business operations that these
links remain up. If users are unable to connect they cannot perform their job functions. Areas
such as the warehouses, for example, rely on access to the IBM System i5 ® for picking, packing
and shipping.
“Macquarie Assist, the Network Operations Centre has been excellent with prompt notifications
usually by phone,” Esra said. “We have also found the personalised account management Macquarie
provides to be first class.”
Previously billing was a challenge with so many separate cost centres and multiple references
to each site in the billing. Macquarie Telecom delivered a single online bill for all systems
that was customisable and itemised by cost centre, saving significant internal administration
costs.
“It took a little while to sort out but we now have a clearer picture on the costs and
the overall expenditure.”
Wattyl has found the Macquarie Telecom Account Management team to be responsive and dedicated.
Macquarie aggregates services from a number of different sources yet provides a single point
of contact for everything Wattyl requires.
“Macquarie has fostered a personal relationship with Wattyl; something we felt was missing
with previous providers. We have been impressed by their flexibility and continued investment
in infrastructure to provide competitively prices services. With increased competition, Voice
and Data have become commodity services but Macquarie provides these with significant added
value,” Esra said.
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