CASE STUDY: WeP: How WeP did the WAN Trick...

The most critical and fundamental of the problems faced by the team was in

designing and building a network from scratch and connecting 17 offices across

the country. The task of creating a network was daunting given the following

challenges:

n  WeP

erstwhile PSD (Peripherals Systems Division) was part of the well connected

Wipro WAN



n  We had a
deep entrenched culture of e-mails and Internet, in other words, if e-mail did

not work, the enterprise would come to a grinding halt literally



n  WeP’s
promise to our customers to leverage on technology by e-enabling all our

critical business processes

WeP Peripherals Ltd (formerly Wipro ePeripherals Ltd) is a leading IT peripherals solutions and services company in India. WeP commenced operations in 1986 as a Peripherals Division of Wipro Infotech, one of the largest IT companies in India and then became an independent corporate entity in September 2000. Today, WeP is India’s largest employee owned company. Becoming an independent entity bought its own challenges for the IT team at WeP.

Designing the WAN



Keeping the above challenges in mind, WeP went about designing the WAN. Some

of the critical drivers were as follows:

n  The

organisational business operations hierarchy based on the regional reporting

structure; For example: The regional offices/ locations of Delhi, Chandigarh,

Lucknow, Jaipur report into a zonal office in Delhi



n  The customer
(employee) is always affected and is the first to know of a network bottleneck



n  Our promise
to the customer — "enytime, enywhere for enyone by year 2002". The

change in role of Technology (at WeP) from that of a business enabler to that of

critical business driver was clearly a factor in the capacity planning &

availability planning of the network



n  The
heterogeneity of platforms — our ERP running on SCO Unix & HP Unix, and

the messaging, extranet and intranet initiatives were on Microsoft NT



n  DoT being
the only provider of bandwidth at that point in time, other providers like

Bharti and Reliance were just about setting up their networks



n  Managing,
predicting and ensuring reduced downtime of business critical applications



n  A Network
availability requirement of over 99 per cent - round the clock



n  Defining the
QoS and being able to monitor the SLA



n  Ability to
determine the network bottlenecks, and when service levels are affected/

violated and isolate the same



n  Ability to
prioritise network traffic arising out of various business critical application



n  Managing the
security requirements arising out of setting up a private network with

interconnectivity to public networks



n  And finally,
the inadequacy (in terms of knowledge) of the internal IT team’s knowledge of

Networks and Network management, which is the case in any enterprise wherein IT

is not the core business.

Tackling the problems



Given the above challenges and drivers, WeP (using internal and external

facilitation) designed and implemented a complex network with an investment of

over Rs 5 crore in basic network, active components and mission critical

applications like messaging. Some of the key features of this network were:

n  Over 99%

network availability.



n  Access to
internet across the locations



n  Voice and
data capable



n  High
redundancy

Anytime, anywhere...



a) Fast anytime, anywhere messaging–from offices, cybercafes, hotel rooms

and on the move from mobile phones.



b) Instant messaging thru MSN messenger across the locations.


c) Ability to support the expected explosion of Intranet and extranet
applications, which actually happened during 2001-02 wherein a host of

applications were deployed.

On the front of network management, we outsourced to a combination of MSPs

(Management Service Providers) to handle the issues of network availability,

prioritisation, automation and above all ensuring the defined QoS.

Now that this network has met our requirements for over two-three years, WeP

is moving towards realising the vision of a "fully networked

enterprise" and a "virtual network of printers" across India.

A clear strategy for the future is to:



n  Pioneer

the paradigm shift from having ownership of a printer to accessibility to a

printer; and



n  "Collaborate
with customers, channel partners, suppliers, employees and shareholders through

a fully networked enterprise."

Designing and implementing the innovative concept of "Virtual network of

printers" is something akin to the "STD booth" concept in India.

Extending and managing a network of such complexity across channel partners,

suppliers, share holders, customers and ensuring that the fundamental challenges

of network availability, prioritisation and automation are not compromised is in

itself a sophisticated task.

Not to forget that at WeP, the dependence on IT is immensely high–to the

point that we at WeP say; "Business is IT and IT is Business".

The success of this seemingly impossible vision of a "virtual network of

printers" and a "fully networked enterprise" will depend on how

we handle some critical success factors.

Thomas S Anand The author is chief

technology officer at WeP Ltd.