Arivia.kom, a leading supplier of IT services and solutions, together with its implementation partner Lehae Technologies, a black economic empowerment IT company, has completed a R1.5 million upgrade of the local area network (LAN) at Natref in Sasolburg.
Natref (National Petroleum Refiners of South Africa (Pty) Ltd, which has been at the cutting-edge of refining technology since its inception, last year undertook a massive expansion and upgrading project to increase its production capacity by some 24% starting in June 2002. The refinery, which is jointly owned by Sasol and Total South Africa (Pty) Ltd, also needed to resolve bottlenecks in its LAN, increase the network capacity reserves and increase the throughput of its network in order to achieve greater efficiency.
Lehae Technologies brought arivia.kom on board to assist it with the project planning and implementation as arivia.kom is a recognised Nortel Networks supplier and has both experience and knowledge in the design and implementation of high-end *networks.
The project included the upgrade of the existing 155Mbps ATM backbone, which was running on BAY 5000 switches, to a Gigabit Ethernet backbone running on Nortel Networks` passport 8600 series routing switches interconnected with a dual-link (MLT) 1000Mbps fibre optic cable.
The seven-month project, which began at the end of May 2002, was commissioned and successfully went live at the end of December 2002.
Says Gary Taylor, project manager of arivia.kom: "The project was completed successfully, the migration of data was went smoothly and the system has shown a marked improvement for Natref, with increased speed and throughput.
"With thorough planning and a close working relationship between Natref, Lehae and arivia.kom we were able to deliver the network upgrade on time and on budget."
Says Andries Visagie, Natref project manager: "It was essential that the new network be user-friendly, easy to manage and up and running by the deadline date in December. We also needed to achieve substantial improvements in network utilisation."
Dumisani Mkhazi, the director of Operations at Lehae, adds: "The skill level of Natref, arivia.kom and Lehae engineers, coupled with arivia.kom`s capacity, resulted in the successful network upgrade. We at Lehae are satisfied that the skills transfer, capacity building, and economies of scale provided by arivia.kom are measurable and quantifiable."
Throughout the lifecycle of the project a process of testing and evaluation was followed in order to ensure that issues were identified and dealt with timeously and the final server migration was scheduled for a time of least impact.
Says Taylor: "Prior to the cut-over, which was done at the beginning of December, we ran the new network in parallel for about three weeks."
Passport 8600 switches offer high performance and secure networking with increased performance but without sacrificing flexibility and control. Using software code that is fully featured for layer two and three switching, the 8600 series has proved itself to be ideal for improving network performance.
Says Taylor: "It was an unusual project from the point of view that arivia.kom was approached by a second party to assist. It was a challenging and interesting project because Lehae and arivia.kom have different approaches and this required us to combine both sets of thinking."
Arivia.kom and Lehae were responsible for the network architecture analysis, design planning and project management as well as the hardware requirements. Lehae worked closely with arivia.kom on the planning and installation stages.
Says Taylor: "There was an element of skills transfer and arivia.kom is more than willing to work with BEE companies, sharing and imparting knowledge and experience.
"Based on the successful outcome of this project, we are optimistic that further joint projects will be undertaken in partnership with Lehae."
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Arivia.kom is a leading South African IT company operating throughout Africa, with the proven ability to implement customised, integrated IT solutions and provide services at whichever global location our clients may specify. Our end-to-end services and solutions generate significant business advantages for our clients. We have a thorough understanding of the market sectors in which we focus and an impressive track record as proof of our capabilities.