Hyundai Car (UK) Ltd. is sole distributor for all Hyundai vehicles imported into the UK. Part of RAC PLC, one of the UK's largest motoring service providers, Hyundai is one of the fastest growing car companies in the UK. Its High Wycombe head office performs sales, marketing, HR, IT, and other functions, whilst the Tilbury Docks import centre fits UK-specific components to vehicles and inspects them before their distribution via Hyundai's local network of 160 dealers. When Hyundai approached Sigma Technology, it had a robust five-year-old Enterasys Smart Switch network - served by a Smart Switch 8600 router - providing data connectivity at the High Wycombe head office, but a piecemeal local area network at Tilbury. In 2004, prompted by a surge in its business, Hyundai's Technology Manager asked Sigma Technology to rethink the import centre's network infrastructure.
The Tilbury centre was handling about 36,000 cars yearly through its inventory management system and Hyundai wanted an infrastructure capable of managing projected growth for the next five to seven years. Sigma's technology audit also uncovered Hyundai's desire to make its head office operations more transparent to its dealerships without exposing the network to more security risks. Key themes included:
Sigma recommended a cost-effective technology re-use and selective upgrade strategy rather than a costly wholesale replacement.
We redeployed most of the Enterasys kit from the head office to Tilbury and upgraded the head office infrastructure with the latest secure networking Matrix E7 switches (incorporating built-in redundancy and automated security-threat response). To minimise costs we kept the Smart Switch 8600 at the network core and re-used some older second-generation blades from the existing Smart Switches in the new Matrix E7 switches. For extra bandwidth, performance, and redundancy we replaced the existing 1-Gigabit link with two 2-Gigabit Ethernet uplinks from the core Smart Switch router to each chassis. The Enterasys Secure Network Policy Manager, working across High Wycombe and Tilbury, provided the extra level of security for centrally managing network access rights whilst minimising user support requirements. At Tilbury we implemented a new handheld wireless barcode scanning system to track vehicles. We linked this to the inventory management system via the Smart Switches redeployed from the High Wycombe head office.
According to Hyundai's Technology Manager, Clive Wadham, the benefits of upgrading the Enterasys kit and redeploying the original head office switches in the Tilbury office entail a highly cost-effective solution.
"The Enterasys secure networking infrastructure is hugely beneficial for ensuring business continuity, centralised management, control of user authentication, access to the network, and a dramatic increase in performance and bandwidth. We've been particularly impressed by the versatility of the Enterasys kit and the ease of migration resulting from Sigma's efforts. The integration between old and new switches allowed us to make a staged transition and redeploying our existing equipment saved us an enormous amount of money. We see increased accessibility for employees, dealerships, and customers via our wide-area network, the Internet, and mobile devices. The infrastructure we have deployed provides us with capacity for growth and the flexibility our business requires, as well as increased protection from security threats."