Beca, one of the largest employee-owned engineering and related consultancy groups in Asia-Pacific, has consolidated several office locations into a central new headquarter that runs exclusively on Brocade network infrastructure. In the process the firm has been able to leverage the value of its investment in Brocade platforms while enjoying new levels of performance, availability and functionality.
The Beca Group works in six markets – Buildings, Industrial, Power, PublicSector, Transport and Water – delivering engineering, planning, architecture, project and cost management, software technology and valuation services. Over the past decade, Beca has completed 60 award-winning projects. In its home “hub” of New Zealand the firm is a dominant player with a multi-disciplinary team of more than 1,000 in Auckland alone. The Group operates 17 offices throughout New Zealand, Australia and Singapore and China within Asia. Each office has implemented Brocade networking solutions as its standard networking offering.
Beca chose to address the issues that would challenge its business environment in the new Auckland headquarters over the coming years and planned its network infrastructure accordingly. With the addition of many wireless and mobile devices from its own staff and guest consultants into the core IT infrastructure expected to continue, it had high demands for scalability, security and performance. Beca needed a network that would meet such high performance requirements and felt that Brocade was best placed to cater for this.”
“We standardized on Brocade for networking a few years ago and it has been a very successful experience,”said Andy Shields, group IT manager, of Beca. This has paid dividends in establishing the new office infrastructure. We have been able to carry over our investment in training, management tools and some of the platforms which has had a positive impact on our bottom line and met our networking requirements.”
At the heart of the new Beca Auckland campus network is a pair of Brocade BigIron RX8 Layer 2/3 Ethernet switches, combined in a high-availability multi-chassis configuration. Having used an RX8 at one of its previous locations, Beca was able to upgrade the chassis with new 10Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) modules and optics for re-deployment as part of the new non-stop network core.
Brocade's FastIron CX648 stackable switches, with 48 Power-over-Ethernet ports and redundant power supplies, have been deployed as Beca's network edge devices. These provide a high density GbE access ports for PCs, IP phones and wireless network access points in the new office.
Utilizing Brocade IronStack technology up to eight FCX switches can be linked into a single logical device, with multiple 10 GbE connections to the network core, simplifying network management and increasing resiliency in Beca's network access layer.
“The new Beca HQ network is a prime example of the Brocade One Strategy in action,” said Graham Schultz, regional director for Australia and New Zealand, Brocade. “It's about investment protection that facilitates network evolution to meet tomorrow's requirements and improves total cost-of-ownership. It’s also about unmatched simplicity in network architecture and management that further reduces TCO, with non-stop performance that keeps Beca up and running at all times.”
About Brocade Switching Solutions
Industry-leading Brocade switches are the foundation for high-performance connectivity in storage, IP, and converged network environments. These highly reliable, scalable, and available switches are designed for a wide range of environments—enabling a low TCO and fast ROI.
For more information, please visit www.brocade.com
Productdetails:
BrocadeRC,FCXSeries - http://www.brocade.com/products/all/switches/index.page?network=ETHERNET
AboutBrocade
Brocade® (Nasdaq:BRCD) networking solutions help the world’s leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere.(www.brocade.com)
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Cathryn van der Walt or Pru Quinlan
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