Networks / Telecoms
Extending the
global enterprise
‘Going Global’ offers many opportunities to an organisation;
potential new markets, new revenue streams, to state the
obvious – but what about the challenges it brings to the CIO
organisation at an operational level? By Xantus.
Questions need to be considered such Consulting. “Companies need to upgrades required to SABMiller’s
as; how do you deploy business consider this carefully; undertake a global network. The network strategy
applications to a global user base? thorough review of their network outlined an optimised network
What are the most cost effective infrastructure and analyse the impact utilisation approach which will reduce
technologies to use? How much their global applications will have”. network upgrade costs through the
network bandwidth do you need? choice of different network
Whatever the answer to these In a recent example, Xantus helped technologies for different needs. In
questions, the need to ensure the IT one of the world’s largest brewers monetary terms, it means a reduction
infrastructure can accommodate future SABMiller. SABMiller has brewing in network upgrade costs of
global strategies is paramount. interests or distribution agreements in approximately 10% over 3 years.”
over 60 countries across five
Take a relatively obvious example of continents. The group’s brands include How is this done? According to
the impact new global services and premium international beers such as Xantus, there are three major steps:
applications will have on the network Miller Genuine Draft, Peroni Nastro
infrastructure. A well thought out, Azzurro and Pilsner Urquell, as well as Step 1 - Profiling the applications
optimised network will ensure effective an exceptional range of market leading The first step is to profile the
utilisation of resources and provide the local brands. applications and calculate the
right level of service and cost. Get bandwidth required. For “stateless”
this wrong and it could result in The company has a federated (web-based) applications bandwidth is
business applications that do not structure, with operations split into estimated from the concurrent users
perform globally, delays to deployment local Business Units, each of which will and the bandwidth required per
due to network constraints and access global business applications transaction. For “stateful” (client/server)
escalating costs. hosted in four regional data centres. applications the bandwidth is
SABMiller wished to implement new estimated from the concurrent users
So what is the answer? “When global business applications to enable and the bandwidth required per
deploying applications globally the them to standardise business session.
underlying architecture may need to be processes across the Business Units,
modified to mitigate the effects of share best practice knowledge and Some variables are difficult to predict,
network latency and bandwidth. Just reduce the overall cost of provisioning so it is important to validate theoretical
because an application is ‘web IT systems. estimates with physical measurement.
enabled’ doesn’t necessarily mean that If some of the applications are already
it will run efficiently over a global “We produced a network capacity plan in use a network measurement tool can
network” says Andrew Hassall, Senior and profiled the new global business be used to monitor the actual
Consultant with IT Consultancy, Xantus applications In order to identify the bandwidth used and compare this with
56 | DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS | www.datacentresols.com September 2008
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