The Players
SA Eagle is part of the Zurich Financial Services Group. One of South Africa`s largest short term insurers, SA Eagle operates in both domestic and commercial markets.
USKO is an IT company which delivers E-business solutions and services to medium and large enterprises. With a team of more than 800 IT specialists across southern Africa, and operating out of 13 sites from Cape Town to Mauritius, USKO offers its clients and partners competitive advantage through partnerships and joint ventures. Listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, key USKO shareholders include the Altron Group and USKO staff. Altron has management control of USKO.
The Challenge
The SA Eagle network spans the whole of South Africa and extends into Botswana and Zimbabwe. Of this, 90% of SA Eagle users required access to their services across the WAN, resulting in a need for a more centralised service. . Not only was SA Eagle finding a decentralised network difficult to maintain, but it was also not a cost effective method for running a network. SA Eagle needed to remove the asset value of its WAN from the balance sheet and to refocus its internal IT resources on the core business. The company also identified a need for high speed access during business hours, deliverable through a well designed, powerful, and efficient network. USKO`s ability to provide value added services, its shared common synergies with SA Eagle, and its partnership offerings clinched an agreement.
The Response
USKO designed a centralised multiprotocol network with built in high redundancy. The entire outsourced WAN is linked into USKO`s network management centre in Johannesburg. As a result, SA Eagle`s total cost of ownership has been drastically reduced. In addition, a fully outsourced network allows SA Eagle the benefits of regular upgrades, service level agreements and access to the highest level of skilled Cisco trained USKO engineers. Maintenance and hardware support are of the highest quality. This network has been designed to encompass capacity planning and accommodate growth. It guarantees high up-time and is fully functional 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. USKO has provided SA Eagle with a 100% network availability guarantee based on automatic ISDN backup when primary lines go down
The Technology
This multiprotocol network (not only IP connection but also IPX and SNA) now uses the 3660 Router, the most advanced in this product range. It is capable of mixing a variety of the latest technologies such as ISDN, leased lines and frame relay. These long distance links imply large cost savings for SA Eagle. A higher speed dedicated link is used on leased lines and ISDN for shorter links. This modular router has increased port density and speed. The connectivity traffic is mainframe AS400 with a complex configuration, allowing for prioritisation of traffic. Tunnelling on the mulitprotocol IP/IPX backbone takes AS 400SNA traffic and tunnels it via the Cisco infrastructure.
Quotes to be slotted in on the Case Study sheet
"USKO is a silver status Cisco partner"
"We offer SA Eagle a low risk solution with an innovative approach and real business value" Chris Henchie, Account Manager
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