Case Study

Bridgestone Australia

Bridgestone is a multinational tyre manufacturer and retailer. In Australia alone, the company employs 2,000 people, with an annual turnover of US$270 million. Corporate computer systems are distributed across a wide area network (WAN) of about 80 sites.

Bridgestone has invested very heavily in information systems to improve its operations. SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) underpins Bridgestone's application environment, which includes Siebel customer relationship management (CRM) and a number of legacy systems.

In addition to much higher performance and productivity gains, the company estimates it will save approximately US$55,000 a year in bandwidth upgrades alone by implementing Traffic Shaping.

"Network performance was very variable. People eventually decided they didn't want to use the system as it was too slow. We had looked at a number of options in terms of router management and network performance monitoring, none of which gave us the ability to holistically manage the whole wide area network.

"The impact on the IT department was significant, with a lot of helpdesk calls. We could really do nothing to resolve the problems because the network speed issues were largely invisible to us. (Using NP) we have managed to save costs in terms of reducing bandwidth requirements. The users are now experiencing consistent network performance, consistent response, and that's resulting in greater acceptability of the systems." - Darren Denley, IT Corporate Manager, Bridgestone Australia.