African Products, the largest wet-miller of corn in Africa, and an international producer of starch, glucose and related products, has completed a nationwide upgrade of its enterprise-wide 3Com networks in a bid to boost operational performance and accommodate future growth.
The company`s Johannesburg offices in Meadowdale now operate on a high-speed Gigabit Ethernet LAN, while its four plants in Kilpriver, Belville, Germiston and Meyerton have been also been the focus of network upgrades.
"We`re looking at substantial performance increases in order to maintain our competitive advantage in the global economy," says Donald Crookes, African Product`s IT Project Manager.
African Products also opted for the upgrade in order to manage its enterprise networks remotely from head office, provide prioritisation functionality and ensure scalability while optimising existing networking infrastructures.
"Previously we had no means of monitoring what was happening at our plants` networks. Now we can monitor their health remotely and take appropriate action should it become necessary to correct a fault," he says.
The management function utilises Web-based screen alerts in real-time as well as e-mail messages sent to the network manager, which highlight problems and recommend appropriate remedial action.
Technical perspective
Integr8 IT, the 3Com partner responsible for designing and implementing the new networks, installed a 3Com SuperStack 4900 12-port switch linking the company`s three Intel-based servers and two stacks of six 3Com SuperStack 4400 switches at Meadowdale.
The SuperStack 4900 was equipped with three Gigabit network interface cards, while one of the Superstack switches in each of the stacks was equipped with a stacking kit and a Superstack3 100-base-T Module. The 10 other 4400s also utilised 3Com`s stack extender kits.
"The 4900 enabled us to achieve gigabit speed utilising existing standard Cat 5 UTP cabling which leveraged an existing investment, while the use of the stacking kits ensures there are no bottlenecks in the switches," says Jan Roux, Integr8 IT`s technical manager."
The switching technology also supports 3Com`s XRN technology unveiled in March as a "pay-as-you-grow" feature for building highly reliable enterprise LAN cores. Its Layer 3 capabilities also increase network security by enabling users to be segmented on the network.
"As Layer 3 equipment, we were also able to configure prioritisation for African Product`s SAP system. As its core business system, it had become critical to be able to ensure that any SAP transaction had priority over any other application over the network," he says.
The solution also delivered on the need for centralised network management using 3Com`s built-in network management software.
At the plants, Integr8 IT deployed Meadowdale`s old 3Com SuperStack 3300 switches equipping them with FX fibre modules so that they can run on the new 100Mbps fibre links installed at the plants. Fibre trunks were also implemented to boost performance further, though Kliprivier, utilised existing UTP trunking.
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