High-tech vacuum cleaner manufacturer, Dyson, is planning
to improve communications between its UK headquarters and offices
across Europe by rolling out virtual private network
technology.
VPN links
between its UK and Chicago offices, and its Malaysian manufacturing
plant have already led to significant improvements in staff
productivity, the company said.
The deployment
has enabled about 50 mobile field staff to dial into Dyson's
central IT systems in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, check their e-mails,
and access software applications from home or while on the road,
since the roll-out began in July.
Dyson said the
VPN is a fraction of the cost of an equivalent leased line. A
leased line would cost up to £100,000 for each office location,
compared to £45,000 for the VPN link.
The company
took the decision to improve communications speeds and provide
redundancy against system failure by replacing its existing VPN
link between Malaysia and Malmesbury, earlier this year.
At the same
time, the company switched its internet service provider, from PSI
to Cable & Wireless, which Dyson felt offered a better global
coverage.
"Our firewall
was running quite poorly and I wanted to take off as much load as
possible. It was also a single point of failure and I wanted to
address that," said Simon Lambe, senior technical analyst at
Dyson.
Dyson installed
a pair of SonicWall's Pro 330 VPN units in Malmesbury and Malaysia,
and an extra 2 megabit circuit to provide redundancy. One circuit
is used for web browsing and e-mail and the other is used to
exchange applications data and encrypted traffic.