SUCCESS STORIES

Ferro Corporation

Ferro Corporation, established in 1919 as a manufacturer of porcelain enamel frit, is now a producer of specialty materials for industry, including coatings, colours, ceramics, chemicals and plastics. Ferro's major markets are building and renovation, major appliances, household furnishings, transportation, industrial products, packaging and leisure products.

Ferro has been a valued client of AV Tech for 12 years, which makes them one of the longest standing clients.  AV Tech has been able to support Ferro through the many change of technologies over the years and have scoped & implemented countless projects. 

At the beginning of the relationship Ferro used AV Tech for networking, messaging and collaboration, as they did not have their own internal IT department.  12 years on they still have no internal IT department due to the service that AV Tech is able to offer them.  They feel no need to invest in their own resources when they have been able to call on AV Tech for all their IT requirements.

This has fallen in line with the Ferro philosophy of outsourcing as much as possible so that they can focus on their core competencies.  Ferro has outsourced all their help desk to AV Tech and use AV Tech’s proactive support to maintain and manage their IT infrastructure on a regular basis.

One of the most recent projects that AV Tech has been able to implement is a VPN over xDSL.  AV Tech consulted with Ferro’s IT Manager based in the Untied States to determine their requirements.  The requirement was to connect the Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China and India offices to their Head Office in Cleveland, USA.  Ferro Melbourne was currently using  Frame Relay to connect to Cleveland at a cost of over $250K per annum. 

To install a Frame Relay connection into these 6 other sites was not feasible due to cost restraints.  Therefore, AV Tech was able to implement a cost-effective solution by using a VPN over xDSL for all sites.  All 6 Asia/Pacific sites connect directly into Australia.  Australia has two xDSL connections, 1 dedicated for SAP & email traffic to Cleveland Head Office and the second connection is used for all other Internet traffic.

Ferro’s concerns regarding the security of a VPN where answered by using PIX Firewalls which AV Tech configured and installed for the entire Asia/Pacific infrastructure.  These firewalls are monitored and managed on an on-going basis by AV Tech to ensure that the solution is secure and scalable. 

The outstanding benefit of this solution was the cost savings to Ferro.  AV Tech was able to save Ferro  $900,000 per annum for the entire Asia/Pacific region.

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