Case Studies
Harman/Becker likes the sound of Teneo's packet shaping solution
Allot NetEnforcer enhances the performance of SAP application and makes bandwidth work harder.
Harman/Becker Automotive Systems (a subsidiary of US-based Harman
International Industries Inc) is a manufacturer of factory fitted
original equipment in Europe's luxury car segment. It has developed
the world's most innovative, multi-function Navigation systems and
its audio systems are available on vehicles by BMW, Porsche and
Mercedes-Benz. Harman is a billion dollar company, operating in
hundreds of countries across the world.
Harman/Becker began its association with Teneo by evaluating and
subsequently investing in its Castle Rock SNMPc product to manage
LAN usage, supply information on bottlenecks and provide an alerting
and reporting solution. When Teneo approached Harman/Becker with
information on its Allot bandwidth management solution, Network
Manager Chris Murray immediately recognised a problem that it could
fix.
"I was looking for a product to help the throughput of traffic on
our 512k link to Germany. We use this link to access email, SAP,
CAD files and for internet browsing but I had no management information
and no way of throttling the traffic. We had evaluated another product
but it didn't improve the performance, so I was very interested
in looking at Teneo's offering."
Chris's issue was the flooding of the network at certain times,
which affected application performance for SAP users and caused
unacceptable delays. With no visibility of the link even the company's
url filtering solution was ineffective as Chris could not see what
traffic was eating up the bandwidth.
When evaluating Allot, it quickly became clear that packet shaping
was the solution that Harman/Becker needed.
The NetEnforcer bandwidth management appliances offer best-of-class
traffic shaping technology for Quality of Service (QoS) and Service
Level Agreement (SLA) enforcement and real-time traffic monitoring.
Policy enforcement is easy, using Allot's NetWizard set up utility
and Harman/Becker was quickly maximising the performance of its
business critical applications.
"We found the whole process very easy to set up and very intuitive"
enthused Chris. The user process is comprised broadly of 3 activities.
Firstly the NetWizard will auto-discover what applications are in
use on the network, this allows visibility of which protocols are
affecting network performance and should be managed. Secondly the
QoS Policy Form is used to define QoS attributes. Minimum and maximum
percentages of bandwidth can be allocated per application and traffic
can be prioritised on a scale of 1 to 10. This crucial process links
business priorities with IT resources. Thirdly, traffic can be continually
monitored and policies refined to maintain maximum network control
and application performance.
Chris continues, "Deploying the Allot solution has allowed us to
take back control of the network. Important business traffic such
as SAP can be prioritised, at the expense of non-business critical
web browsing. Additionally the url filter was made redundant, an
important financial gain for us as it required us to pay an annual
fee".
By eliminating the url filter, justifying the expense of the Allot
solution was easy for Harman/Becker, with Return on Investment expected
within the first year. Add this to the improved productivity experienced
by SAP users and Allot makes for a compelling argument. Now in a
position of control, Chris can now plan upgrades more effectively,
in the knowledge that additional bandwidth will go where it is most
needed.
Visit Harman/Becker at http://www.becker.de/beckerCC21/www_root/index.html
For further information please contact media@teneo.co.uk