Birrana Engineering, leader in the design, manufacture and servicing of mining transport equipment has made dramatic changes to the efficiency of its Virtual Private Network since installing a NetBox in each of its locations. The company had been relying on an antiquated and unsupported VPN solution, but the suite of features offered in the NetBox has given the company unprecedented control over its network. The combination of traffic shaping (Quality of Service), web filtering, pre-delivery spam filtering and improved bandwidth, all provided on an IBM hardware platform, help to ensure Birrana retains its position as an indispensable partner to the Australian mining industry.

The Business

Birrana started operations in 1974 and now has four service centres around Australia, a head office in Adelaide and branches in Singleton, Perth, and Mackay. The company aims to keep the mining industry operating at optimum efficiency by supplying reliable components for major production machines.

The Situation

To service the mining industry effectively, Birrana has established operations in four states around Australia. Birrana relies heavily on its Virtual Private Network to give staff access to a range of critical business applications, including the customer data base, ordering systems and stock availability.

"We only had very basic control over the network," Ashleigh Baker, Birrana's IT Support Officer says. Mr Baker was given the job of coordinating the replacement of the company's current VPN. The VPN was based on aging equipment. It had no user controls, lacked any reporting capabilities and support was below the company's level of satisfaction.

If a staff member in the branches was browsing the internet, the whole network between branches would slow down. Without network monitoring, traffic shaping and web usage controls, efficiency in Birrana's branch operations was being compromised.

"Because there was no prioritization of traffic, any large emails that were being sent out or anyone surfing the internet was affecting the throughput of the main business applications," Mr Baker says. "We had no control over traffic on the network - it was just a big free for all."

Spam was also a major source of frustration for staff. It was slowing down the network between branches, taking up valuable bandwidth and time. Ashleigh Baker contacted IT partner Comunet for a means of upgrading the VPN and eliminating spam from the network.

The Solution

Birrana assessed several international and local VPN & gateway security products. But found nothing offered the breadth of features and functionality as the NetBox Blue solution.

NetBox Blue provides unique pre-delivery filtering technologies that provide Birrana with full network protection, while preserving bandwidth. At the gateway, security and management functionality provides a world class firewall, content filtering and policy enforcement engines.

NetBox Blue's world leading PipePlusTM technology delivers WAN load balancing and failover, providing inexpensive bandwidth upgrades and business continuity through in-built resilience for Birrana's internet service. The complete head office solution is all delivered on a single system, providing cost reduction benefits as well as ease of management and support.

NetBox Blue's traffic shaping module provides Birrana with the ability to prioritize mission critical applications and ensure Quality of Service to business applications and an efficient network between branch operations.

"The beauty of the NetBox is it wasn't just a VPN product," Mr Baker says. "It has many other features built into it. Other providers weren't able to offer those features in the one product and platform. With other solutions, you pay a lot more for the extra features and end up with multiple systems to manage."

Birrana was able to install NetBoxes in all four of its branches in one morning, ensuring downtime and disruption for the company was minimized.

"It was an extremely smooth transition," Mr Baker says. "We don't have a lot of technical expertise in the branches but we were able to get it up and running in a limited amount of time."

The Results

Birrana is enjoying the benefits of a well managed and secure VPN with the added bandwidth provided by Pipe PlusTM as well as benefits from URL filtering and a massive reduction in the amount of spam staff members have to wade through.

"We were expecting some level of spam filtering but we didn't expect the amazing results we ended up with," Mr Baker says. "It's mind-blowing that 99 percent of emails we are getting are blocked as spam. People are able to get on with productive work instead of filtering their spam email and managing their junk email folders."

The NetBox is also providing time savings for the IT department at Birrana. Because the NetBox was specifically designed to suit medium sized companies, it combines enterprise class solutions in an easy-to-use package.

"It's a lot easier to manage than most other options out there," Mr Baker says. "That means less time is spent on managing it and there's more time for productive work."

"Look at everything out there, but the NetBox appears to do more than any other competitor is capable of, for the same price, and all delivered in one very well integrated solution."