Kings on road for growth

AUSTRALIAN metropolitan transport and logistics provider Kings Transport has hit the road in search of network infrastructure to support continuing growth in its business.

Kings Transport has 350 internal staff plus about 1500 subcontractor drivers across six main sites, as well as personnel at another half-dozen or so remote sites with major clients.

"With the head office in Melbourne, the vast majority of management comes out of there, but we wanted to keep in touch with the other states in a more productive way," IT general manager David Oliver says.

"We went to our incumbent telecommunications provider with our requirements and it came back with a network design that was too expensive."

When Kings Transport's whole-of-business telecommunications contract came up for renewal, it opted to open up a tender to all the main telecommunications players.

Following this, Uecomm, a fully owned subsidiary of Optus Networks, was awarded the job earlier this year.

Uecomm undertook to replace Kings Transport's existing multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network with a metro ethernet WAN delivering scalability, reliability and flexibility for the business.

A legacy replacement program will transform the 15-year-old transport management system over the next 18 months, "so we needed a lot better capability in the network", Oliver says.

The ethernet WAN connects the company's 15 sites nationally, including a 20Mbps fibre link to its head office in Notting Hill, and a mixture of ADSL and SHDSL technologies to its other sites providing 2Mbps and 4Mbps capacity.

This trebled the capacity from the existing 512Kbps.

As part of the contract, Uecomm designed dual medium redundancy into the network with real-time data replication and recovery.

The contract also includes providing the network itself, around-the-clock management of the router and firewall environment, and ongoing support for five years.

Fixed voice and mobile data fleets are included in the contract.

"Our network traffic has increased considerably and there is a lot more centralisation of the organisation, so connectivity to the remote sites is important," Oliver says.

There is a saving of close to 25 per cent on the company's voice and mobile data compared with the previous financial year.

The satellite sites previously connected via a virtual private network, but the new ethernet WAN includes them in the core network for greater efficiency and better outcomes for clients.

"It provides connectivity between all sites and allows us to run our systems across the network and manage and support all the state-based systems from Melbourne," Oliver says.

The company will also be better prepared in the event of a disaster as it can replicate core data in real-time from all sites to a disaster recovery site.

Oliver says the technology has improved efficiencies and prepared it for new bandwidth-hungry applications such as video-conferencing and voice over internet protocol, which would not have been possible before.

"Kings Transport has grown organically in the past several years but future acquisition opportunities are very important for growth," Oliver says.

It is also important to integrate acquisitions as quickly as possible, he says.

The Uecomm network enables the addition of extra nodes and sites quickly and easily, and it can be expanded on demand, he says.