Zagame Automotive Group is the official Victorian dealer for Ferrari, Maserati, Audi, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lamborghini, Skoda and Lotus. With 300 staff spread across 9 locations, Zagame’s award winning dealerships and service centres are dedicated to delivering exceptional customer service.
“As a business we are constantly moving. You never know what opportunities tomorrow may bring. We have complete trust in our relationship with Telarus. We are in constant communication and there is an inherent understanding of what we’re doing. We’re in partnership together and our relationship is very transparent. The attitude, ethics and skills are all there. They never give up.
We have a great deal of respect for the support we receive – we see them as allies on our quest. The team at Telarus know us back to front. The biggest benefit of talking to the team at Telarus is that they are local and are fully aware of our Network setup. We know who has the expertise to address specific concerns.”
Adrian Zagame, Director
The Project
A rapid expansion program, driven by acquisition, had resulted in multiple incumbent technology providers and a poor-performing Network that was impacting on business operations and efficiencies. Zagame sought submissions for a new Managed Network, Internet and Security solution to be delivered by a single provider that would reduce complexity, administrative overheads and security risks.
“To put it simply, we had too many parties involved, too many technologies that weren’t talking to each other properly. We couldn’t get anything done easily. Our Network was unreliable and would frequently go down for up to a day and a half at a time. All departments would resort to manual procedures. It was painful to manage and not delivering a great customer experience.”
Adrian Zagame, Director
The Brief
Deliver a high performance, secure and cost effective multi-site Network across all Zagame Automotive locations to allow ease of management, growth and scalability for the future.
Customer Objectives
* Reduce Network complexity, administrative overheads, security risks and network congestion.
* Reduce downtime and increase service levels for critical business sites.
* Centralise Internet access and security to reduce the risk from external threats.
* Invest in a fully managed solution to allow Zagame IT resources to focus on business services.
Telarus’ Approach
Telarus collaborated with in-house Zagame IT resources to design and deploy a Managed Network solution with centralised Internet, managed security, co-location and hosted servers to be provisioned through a staged and project managed delivery strategy. Telarus negotiated flexible contracts to enable Zagame’s on-going major refurbishment program of individual showroom locations.
“The transition phase, from the planning, to the execution, to the services rolling out, was really smooth. Telarus delivered on what they promised. The support we received from Telarus made a lot of hard things easy.”
Allen Sui, IT Manager
What Telarus Delivered
Telarus upgraded Zagame Automotive to a Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Private Network incorporating managed security and network redundancy. The Telarus Network solution allows more efficient and secure communication and enables Zagame staff to have full visibility of key statistics in relation to the Network performance and utilisation.
Zagame’s business critical servers are co-located at one of Telarus’ carrier-grade Data Centres. Should an issue arise, then traffic can be diverted through two alternate Data Centres on the Telarus network, all of which are connected by dark fibre. This assures a high level of uptime for Zagame.
All data links within the Zagame Network are delivered on Ethernet over Fibre (EoF). EoF is fast, reliable and highly scalable. Network traffic is prioritised through Quality of Service (QoS) which gives precedence to time-sensitive network traffic. The Network has been designed to allow for easy addition of new dealerships as well as speed upgrades should requirements change over time.
“The ability to service our clients requires a quality link with guaranteed uptime, availability and performance. Software updates are installed real time during servicing. If you have an intermittent link it’s possible to corrupt the computer in a car.”
Adrian Zagame, Director
Staff within the Telarus Network Operation Centre (NOC) proactively manage and monitor all Zagame Managed Network and security resources. Telarus’ systems provide direct access to core Network and on-site infrastructure which means that trouble shooting is conducted more efficiently and outages, if one was to occur, would be kept to a minimum. Zagame authorised staff can login to the Telarus Network Monitoring System (NMS) and check service performance and uptime.
“The Telarus Network Monitoring Service definitely makes a big difference. You can see what is happening at all sites with regard to Network traffic, uptime and usage. Through alert notifications, not only do we find out that something has gone wrong very quickly, but we also are informed as to exactly what the issue is, which saves a lot of time. Telarus Managed Security and Network Monitoring Service Reporting mean you can drill down to find out how you can improve your own internal operations or user problems.”
Allen Sui, IT Manager
Telarus delivered a centralised Internet gateway through the Telarus Managed Security (TMS) service to provide Internet access for all Zagame sites. The TMS service provides Zagame with a comprehensive threat management solution which reduces the risk of exposure to malicious threats as well as managing Internet content. The service also provides reporting on how security policies are being applied as well as in depth detailed reports on Internet utilisation. TMS also enables users to securely remote access into the Zagame Network via the public Internet from anywhere at any time. This service has also reduced on site costs as well as administrative overheads and risk.
“Telarus unified everything. On the Telarus Network, everything is transparent. If something goes down at a site, we can now utilise Network resources at other sites. Reliance on our Network has never been greater. It wasn’t that long ago that our users used to be able to survive a whole day without the support of the Internet, computers, emails etc. People change. Now if something happens my mobile will be ringing within 30 seconds. There is now an expectation from users that the Network will be available all of the time, because it is.”
Allen Sui, IT Manager