3Com Corporation has announced that Hudson`s Bay, Canada`s largest department store retailer, has deployed a next-generation Gigabit and Fast Ethernet switched network at the company`s Toronto headquarters to support new network requirements resulting form the recent acquisition of Kmart Canada.
On February 6, 1998, Hudson`s Bay Company announced plans to acquire Kmart Canada and combine it with the Zellers division. In addition to the 112 Kmart Canada stores, Hudson`s Bay acquired the Kmart Canada headquarters building in Brampton that will now become the new Zellers head office.
Quickly moving 350 people from the existing Zellers headquarters facilities in downtown Toronto to Brampton, as well as relocating within the building most of the former Kmart staff who were now to become Zellers employees, all with little loss of productivity, was a challenge with major network implications.
"The outstanding success of the relocation project certainly confirmed our selection of 3Com Gigabit technology", says Jim Lambert, an IT director for Hudson`s Bay. "We found the new product line to be compatible with our existing infrastructure as well as reliable, completely transparent during implementation and surprisingly affordable. We are now in the process of rolling out similar Gigabit backbone to our downtown corporate head office and the I.S. campus environment."
Completion of the plans for the 220,000 square foot building required a major upgrade to the existing technology infrastructure. For the Zellers application suite, which includes a variety of client/server and intranet-based applications all with high availability requirements and accessed by 650 workstations throughout the building, the network had to deliver the reliability, performance, and scalability that could meet both the immediate and longer term requirements.
The combination of Gigabit and Fast Ethernet switching offered the best value as well as the greatest bandwidth scalability.
"As the retail industry continues its course of rapid consolidation, there is more demand for faster switching technologies capable of supporting larger-scale application and network deployments," says 3Com SA`s pre sales manager, Paul Ruinaard. "In particular, the need to support a multitude of client/server and intranet based applications, all with high availability requirements, is driving demand for layer 3 switching, switched and segmented 10/100 Ethernet to the desktop, and Gigabit Ethernet for the network backbone."
The Hudson`s Bay network architecture consists of 3Com SuperStack II PS40 segmented hubs connecting to 3Com SuperStack II Switch 3000 10/100s, connecting at Gigabit speed to a SuperStack II Switch 9000 SX, which serves as the network backbone, he explains.
"Looking to the future, we`re well positioned to handle continued growth as new applications and uses demand additional bandwidth," says Lambert. "Having SuperStack II 3000 switches together with fiber backbone wiring will enable us to deliver greater bandwidth to the desktop for network-intensive applications, as well as the possibility of implementing layer 3 switching supported by the SuperStack II 9000 switches."
3Com`s Ruinard points out that retail organisations throughout the world depend on 3Com enabled networks for their point-of-sale and back-office in-store networks, enterprise intranets, and very large-scale distribution center and headquarters networks.
"3Com is a founder of the Retail Network Innovation Awards; a program designed to recognise retailer innovation in the use of networked applications," he adds.
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