Jasco

Jasco Pty Ltd was established in 1960 representing local and overseas manufacturers in scholastic and commercial stationery, office equipment and technical drawing products. Fifty years later, the Jasco product range has expanded to also include fine art, craft, digital imaging products and print finishing equipment. Jasco’s Head Office is located in Meadowbank Sydney. The company has a 13,000m2 distribution centre located at St Marys west of Sydney & sales offices in Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

Quadruples Bandwidth And Drives Significant Cost Savings

Area of operation: Office Supply, Scholastic, Fine Art, Print Finishing and Digital Imaging

Founded: 2006

Number of sites: 35

Technology implemented:

• comUnity Data
  –  managed next-gen firewall
• comUnity View

Key benefits:

• Reductions in total voice spend
• Quadrupling of bandwidth
• Redundancy at critical sites
• Scalable core network
• Ability to prioritise ERP and PoS applications

Existing network restricted business growth

Jasco had plans for its online presence and wanted to upgrade its ERP system, however the existing ADSL network was more than five years old, and not fast enough to support online transactions. In addition, the existing network was not scalable, hindering future growth plans.

Andrew Hislop, IT Manager, Jasco, says, “Prioritisation of critical applications like the ERP and POS systems were not possible on the network and our security solution was unmanaged and spread over a number of devices which was simply not suitable to service an online business. In addition, internet and backup links at the NZ sites were not integrated into the WAN.”

There was also increasing pressure from the business to gain visibility of day-to-day usage trends and overall service performance so that they could effectively plan for future requirements. With 35 sites in the network and limited internal IT resources, the organisation needed a new network that would scale and deliver the performance and reliability to allow the business to drive new initiatives and operational benefits without huge increases in costs.

Enablis Delivers A Solution For Long-term Strategic Benefits

With Enablis’ comUnity® Jasco was able to converge their voice services onto the data network and ensure a business grade service. comUnity Data & View services provide diverse carrier infrastructure options delivered to key sites, such as the warehouses and head office, to maintain maximum uptime, and real-time network visibility for the IT team.

Jon Evans, MD, Enablis said that Jasco is forward thinking in the retail space, “Jasco has taken this path to realise long-term strategic benefits for their business, placing them at the forefront of technology for a mid-sized retail business. By working with a trusted technology partner they don’t have to worry about the complexity of many distributed sites, which is often a burden for lean retail IT departments.”

The comUnity suite of services also delivers the next generation firewall security necessary for the online business, unlimited internet usage with the scalability to increase or decrease bandwidth without penalty, a fully managed service with router hardware supported 24/7 and proactive support. Evans said, “We also manage the migration to the new service with minimal disruption to users and the business.”

Communication Quality Improves While Costs Are Reduced

Enablis provided Jasco with a fully managed WAN that delivers a fibre service with 100 Mbps port capacity for future growth into key sites with a managed Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall. The solution also provides redundancy to critical locations, such as the Head Office and warehouses, in line with Jasco’s Disaster Recovery plans.

“Enablis migrated our 35 sites seamlessly without any disruption to our business. We now have a scalable network which is enabling IT to drive transformation in our business,” said Hislop.

The new service gives four times the bandwidth with Quality of Service (QoS) for future integration of Voice, Video and IP EFTPOS services to drive significant cost savings for the business and simpler management and control across the technology estate.

comUnity View management portal allows Jasco to access network performance data on demand such as daily and weekly usage statistics, usage by protocol and application type, and round trip times between servers and users. The Enablis managed Palo Alto networks next-generation firewall allows Jasco to enjoy peace of mind knowing that it is protected by the leading enterprise network firewall in the market.

Next Phase For The Business

Hislop said the next phase would be to roll out additional cost-saving projects on the back of the upgraded WAN, such as SIP Voice and video conferencing. “Now we have the platform in place we can move to Cloud voice services. Based on our recent voice spend audit we know 66% is spent on line rentals and redundant services that are no longer required. Enablis’ comUnity voice service will remove these costs and we expect to save in excess of 50% that we can redeploy to other business value areas.”

“With Enablis we have a business partner who is prepared to help us drive a return on our investment from this strategic asset,” Hislop concluded.