A refresh of its branch network has put furniture retailer
Courts on a foundation on which to roll out new business
applications as part of a five-year IT
strategy.
The company originally planned to upgrade its 120-store ISDN2-based
branch network because of inefficiencies in the network and
bandwidth constraints.
The network was previously used to poll each store at the close of
business and to pass trading data back to head office. The new IP
virtual private network supports not only this application but also
provides Courts with a network capable of running new in-store
applications, customer relationship management systems and
logistics. The previous link was only able to poll data once a
day.
Mark Gamlin, Courts' voice and data network manager (UK), said,
"Traffic across the network peaks at the end of the business day
when the IT system polls each of the stores to tell them to dial
back and download their trading data.
"Data volumes were just going up and up - as was the cost - and we
were in real danger of running out of bandwidth."
Courts has now completed the roll-out of Inpurple, an IP VPN
operated by SwitchIP, which specialises in providing quality of
service standards for voice, data and videoconferencing over
broadband. Courts expects to make annual savings of at least
£100,000 by moving off ISDN2 and to increase bandwidth across its
wide area network by a factor of eight.
Gamlin said he was originally concerned about security on IP-based
networks, but added, "Our head of security has been running
intrusion tests and was unable to break in."
Although the IP network has been running since Christmas 2002,
Gamlin said Courts took the decision to leave the ISDN2 network in
place as a back-up. But he said he was happy with the performance
of the IP network and was now ready to switch off the ISDN2
network.
SwitchIP was also able to defer some of the costs associated with
the move to an IP-based environment by integrating Inpurple into
the existing Courts network. This meant that Inpurple could be
overlaid across the network without the need to take out any legacy
equipment and start again from scratch.
Courts is now beginning a joint partnership with SwitchIP to
develop a bespoke system to replace the telephones in its head
office and 77 superstores with IP handsets. Within five years,
Gamlin said Courts will roll out IP telephony across all its
stores.
Gamlin said the benefit of voice over IP for Courts is that, "There
is no need for us to dial in, which takes up a line a customer
could use. We can contact our sites free of charge and transfer
calls easily."
The set-up involves connecting the IP network into PBXs at the head
office. For stores where a digital phone connection is not
possible, Gamlin said he will be deploying Dect phones for
back-office staff.