Situation - With global operations, cutting-edge technology in numerous fields and over 100 years of business experience, NEC has emerged as a leading global Internet Solution Provider. In each of the three areas most important to the future of the Internet -IT, networking and electronic devices, NEC stands at the forefront of research, product development and implementation of new services.
Problem -A division specialising in the manufacture of PC's, within NEC was presented with the problem of a significant enterprise application implementation across their existing network infrastructure.
Implication - This application implementation initiative was being forced through with significant business drivers and concerns were being raised as to the suitability of their current environment. The extent of the implementation was such that the network traffic levels were expected to rise by approximately 50% at each of their three major manufacturing locations. The provisions of a robust, efficient-networking infrastructure would therefore be essential in order to adequately meet the needs of the business.
Need - NEC had an existing client / vendor relationship with Cisco Systems but were keen to gain an independent view on the state of their current environment. Cisco Systems therefore introduced 3net as a preferred professional services partner to carry out an independent Network Audit and report their findings to the company.
Business Solution
Scope - 3net engaged its Infrastructure Management Division to carry out a Network Audit of NEC's current infrastructure by focusing on the physical network implementation, protocol analysis and traffic levels, that currently existed.
The results and recommendations of the audit were then used to develop a strategy and implementation plan for delivering the aggressive business requirement, on time and within budget.
A short and long-term strategy for IT service delivery was developed, deploying best working practices and conforming to industry standards, in order to move the organisation forward in a structured manner.
Solution - The 3net audit team began by carrying out an extensive analysis of both the physical and logical network structure highlighting concerns to the organisation.
The infrastructure was found to be based on a switched backbone employing the Cabletron (now Enterasys) SmartSwitch product range and the sEcure Fast Switching (SFS) Proprietary protocol. The edge environment was predominantly a 3Com 10BaseT hub infrastructure. The logical network entities were defined and managed by the software based management application Spectrum VLAN manager.
Working closely with both the local and corporate networking teams, 3net consultants identified the network traffic levels to be at saturating point within the physical infrastructure. Based on analysis of the shared media implementation, 3net were able to demonstrate that any further increase in traffic levels would have dramatic consequences, potentially disabling the whole infrastructure environment.
Analysis of the SFS protocol highlighted migration issues related to a standards based switching environment, such as 802.1Q. It was recommended such migration would need special attention due to the incompatibility of the two switching protocols and their inability to co-exist in the same layer two environment.
Enterasys themselves were also removing support for the SFS protocol at the end of 2002 that would leave the organisation exposed from a network support point of view.
3net highlighted and presented all concerns to upper management and developed an action plan to move forward in order to provide an environment that would support the business deliverables.
3net recommended a vendor independent, high-level network re-design and phased implementation plan. The plan detailed the methodology and requirements to firstly improve and resolve the issues of network saturation by the implementation of a switched edge, and then a phased approach to migrate from the SFS environment to a Gigabit layer 3 switching solution.
The migration would involve the replacement of the current SmartSwitch Routers with layer 3 switching platforms and gradual migration of users from the SFS environment onto the 802.1Q environment.
Business Benefits
As a result of 3net's audit, NEC management were able to understand the current status of their infrastructure and create a business case for the rectification of gaps within their environment. 3net's independent recommendation also helped the management team evaluate their options for developing their infrastructure to meet the business need in a cost conscious, quality focused and timely manner.
