Peer-to-Peer

Moving ahead by enhancing IT

ThyssenKrupp Industries India relied upon Avaya GlobalConnect to revamp its complete IT infrastructure to enhance its operational efficiency and increase productivity. By Tanu Talwar

ThyssenKrupp Industries India, a 100 percent subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Industries AG, is considered to be one of the trusted names in the line of Open Cast Mining and Bulk Material Handling Systems, Sugar Plant and Machinery, Cement Plants and Machinery and Steam Generating Plants. At the time of its incorporation in 1957, the company had relied upon a manual system for handling its all-important information and was largely dependant on physical files containing significant records, documents, applications, payments and valuable customer transactions, the phenomenal growth experienced by the company resulting in islands of fragmented data that need to be upgraded and managed on a daily basis wasting both valuable corporate time and resources. Looking out for a solution, the company decided to shift to a computerised architecture in 1981-82.

Inefficient IT infrastructure

The company had laid down a legacy network for its internal communication that managed information transfer, customer relations, accounts and finance, recruitment and induction of employees, and transferring important engineering data from one location to the other. Though the legacy network worked fine for other operations one of the major concerns had been the transfer of important engineering data that was just not possible on its existing network.

Sharad Sane, Senior Manager, IT, ThyssenKrupp Industries India says, “Manufacturing machinery as we did for important industry verticals, we had huge volumes of important engineering documents and data that was needed at our manufacturing plants. With the size of this data being on the higher side there was no way that it could be transferred online, as our network did not support such heavy files.” With no other way to transfer data, the company was left with only one option and that was to manually transfer data either by converting it to CDs or in the form of paper files from one location to the other.

The practice not only slowed down production but also resulted in wasted time and resources. Then again, during the course of data being transferred manually from one office to the other, there was always the danger of it getting lost or being misplaced that would have resulted in irreparable losses. This problem further affected the company’s dealing with its clients. “As our network could not support heavy files, we were faced with the constant inconvenience of transferring files physically that proved to be a strenuous and time consuming procedure.” This further affected the companies’ communication with its clients besides affecting its internal cycle.

Sane says, “Most of our internal communication between our two main offices – Hyderabad and Pune—is carried on mail or telephone. However, the pace of communication slowed down because of network congestion or heavy traffic over the network.” This in turn dealt a blow to productivity and operating cost. Seeking a solution to these troubles the company decided to go in for a complete evaluation of its existing IT infrastructure and engaged Tata Consultancy Services in the process.

A future-proof roadmap

An 8-member team from Tata consultancy services was appointed and was tasked with the responsibility to analyze the company’s requirements and create a future-proof technology roadmap. In this capacity, TCS circulated a Request for Proposal (RFP), to revamp ThyssenKrupp Industries (India)’s entire IT infrastructure. The team in a span of ten months came out with a report that made two principal suggestions—firstly, to go in for an IP technology and secondly, to deploy an ERP solution.

Furthermore, another factor that served in favour of IP technology was the fact that ThyssenKrupp Industries India was tasked by its corporate office to comply with benchmarks set by ThyssenKrupp worldwide. This required the Indian branch to upgrade to IP Telephony for greater flexibility and scalability to keep up with the company’s rapid growth and help its Indian arm achieve higher levels of operational efficiency, reduce costs and ensure better customer service. The goal of the organisation was to adhere to the quality benchmarks set by ThyssenKrupp worldwide, which meant beefing up its existing infrastructure with IP technology and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

In the face of an increasingly positive industry outlook, the company decided to upgrade to cutting-edge IP technology to fuel its rapid growth and cater to the needs of its customers in the Middle East and Asia Pacific markets. The company quickly realised that to remain globally competitive, it would have to blend its core strength – integrated engineering expertise – with automation in manufacturing. The company understood that to further hone its network management capabilities and to deliver best-of-breed technology to its clients, it would have to support its team with a converged IT framework.

Looking for a solution

Soon after studying the suggestions made by TCS, the company went in search of a solution provider. Though initially, the company started out with five vendors it shortlisted three providers in the space—Cisco, Avaya Global Connect and 3COM. It selected Avaya Global Connect. Sane explains, “We did a techno- commercial evaluation and found that Avaya suited our requirements both in terms of cost and technology.”

Once the company zeroed in on Avaya, a team of 10 members from Avaya came together to meet the specific needs of ThyssenKrupp Industries India. In order to offer a suitable future-proof IT infrastructure, Avaya further teamed up with its strategic alliance partner Extreme Networks, Juniper Networks and Polycom to create a unique, flexible and scalable network that could meet the company’s growth requirements over the years. The complete umbrella of solutions from Avaya GlobalConnect included: Extreme Networks’ BlackDiamond modular switches, the Extreme Networks Summit 400 Series-High-Performance Gigabit Access Switches (Summit 400-48t, Summit 400-24t, and the Summit 400-24p), Extreme Networks Summit 200 Series Full-feature Layer 2/3 Access Switches (Summit 200-24 and 200-48), Extreme Networks EPICenter Network Management Software, the Polycom VSX 7000, the Avaya IP Office 406, the Juniper Networks NetScreen Firewall and a local area network with a 1,000 nodes.

In order to future-proof the company’s network, Avaya further suggested that ThyssenKrupp do away with chassis-based switches as far as aggregation points were concerned and stick with switches at core points as they needed higher availability and reliability. Furthermore, the Avaya team also proposed a unique comprehensive solution that included core switches as replacements for chassis-based ones. Edge switches on Gigabit aggregation and duplicated uplinks to the core that is on 10G Ethernet. The offering was not only unconventional; it also proved to be a technically robust, reliable and scalable solution.

Looking at the vast network of the company, Avaya came up with an innovative methodology that combines IP telephony with video conferencing. The team met up with the top ranks of ThyssenKrupp and illustrated the benefits of the solution to them. The organisation’s emphasis on convergence turned the bid in favour of the solution suggested by Avaya.

Reaping the benefits

Talking about the benefits of the solution, Sane says, “The deployment represented the first true convergence of a range of product offerings from different vendors. From networking to video conferencing to passive cabling –Avaya brought together a gamut of components and seamlessly integrated them into a single solution.” The implementation that was completed over a year, proved to be beneficial for the company in more ways than one. However one of the major achievements of the Avaya solution was that it helped the company undertake an employee recruitment drive at a low cost and within stringent timelines.

Sane explains, “We wanted to add around 500 people within a year and wanted this task to be accomplished quickly and effortlessly.” Prior to the implementation if the company needed to recruit employees it had to bear heavy travel expenses as all the recruitments were carried out at the company’s Pune office. With the combination of Avaya’s IP Telephony technology and Polycom’s video conferencing capabilities ThyssenKrupp has been able to achieve a powerful IP communications tool for internal and external communications. Sane adds, “Today, if the Managing Director of the company wants to address employees, he can do so by using a conference bridge, which allows a teleconference among 64 parties.” The new video conferencing feature facilitates the process of interviewing potential candidates from various cities across India. It eliminated the need to physically meet up with candidates at its Pune headquarters. The feature has not only helped the company save on travel costs but has also enabled it to carry out an efficient and timely recruitment process.

Then again, the new solution has also made all communication within the company almost free. With the implementation of the solution the company has been able to transfer massive amounts of data in a matter of seconds helping it achieve greater operational efficiency and productivity. “From a business perspective, the interoperability of the Avaya, Extreme Networks, Juniper Networks and Polycom solutions has helped us achieve a significant reduction in costs for our internal communications. We were able to achieve a rapid return on investment and reap the benefits of IP technology almost instantaneously,” states Sane.