Ensuring Timely Production and Delivery for Major Pharmaceutical Company
Spanish pharmaceutical producer and distributor Hefame gets a cutting-edge network core upgrade, with next-generation Allied Telesis technology.
Customer: | Industry: | Location: |
Grupo Hefame | Pharmaceutical Manufacturing | Spain |
We have a relationship of many years working with Allied Telesis, during which we have undertaken numerous large-scale projects that have always been successfully completed.
Director of Information Systems,
Hefame
The Customer
The Hefame Group is a pharmaceutical distribution cooperative, located in Spain and covering the central and southeast region of the country. Since the 1950s, Hefame has provided a high-quality service delivering goods to pharmacies. Hefame also produces and distributes a wide range of its own-brand cosmetic and skincare products, called “Interapothek”.
As a logistics company, Hefame’s prime requirement is to always ensure the timely and safe delivery of all products, regardless of any difficulties that may be encountered. Allied Telesis has worked with Hefame for many years to support their pharmaceutical production and delivery, with timely technology updates to enable new systems and applications that ensure smooth business operation.
ONE YEAR LATER
Since we deployed the SBx908 GEN2 switches, our corporate network has advanced hugely in terms of productivity and quality. Not only does it seamlessly support the high connection speeds that our new corporate servers require, but also VCStack greatly simplifies the topology at the network level.
Combining this new architecture with AMF has increased the visibility of our infrastructure and improved device management, with everything controlled from the simplicity of a single console.
Thanks to Allied Telesis products and solutions, we can now deploy any new service, knowing that our corporate network will be able to assimilate it—without problems, and with total reliability.
Mr. José Manuel Pellicer Manzanera Communications and Security Manager
Hefame
Maximizing Throughput With a Stronger Core
When Hefame decided to redesign their datacenter infrastructure, acquiring new servers to integrate further digital systems, the company needed a robust, new network core to ensure continued seamless access for all staff, to all online applications. As Jose Manuel Pellicer Manzanera, Hefame’s Communications and Security Manager says, “We needed to take a qualitative and quantitative leap in the backbone network architecture, to maximize throughput and get the most out of the new system servers.”
The critical objectives? Increasing the datacenter bandwidth and core power of their network, moving from 10Gbps to 40Gbps, increasing convergence, and guaranteeing redundancy.
Allied Telesis was an easy choice for Hefame. As Fernando Ruiz, Sales Representative at Allied Telesis explains, “We have been working with Hefame for a long time, and have created a partnership based on mutual trust. They were already using an Allied Telesis network, and needing to upgrade to a next-generation solution for higher performance. We have always understood where they are and want to go very closely, so it was easy to create a working framework perfectly adapted to their needs—both technology-wise and budget-wise, by offering the latest switching capabilities, and reusing some of their current Allied Telesis products.”
The global pharmaceuticals market was worth $934.8 billion in 2017 and will reach $1170 billion in 2021, growing at 5.8%, according to a pharma market research report by The Business Research Company.
Source: marketresearch.com
Designing a Future-proof Business Solution
Hefame upgraded its existing Allied Telesis SwitchBlade x908 switches to the next generation, the SwitchBlade x908 GEN2—the ideal solution for this modern enterprise network core. The newly designed core now features four SBx908 GEN2 switches, using Long Distance Stacking (VCStack LD™) to achieve a single core covering both datacenters.
Fully redundant network connectivity using link aggregation and stacking has given the company a high level of system availability. With link aggregation across ports on different virtual chassis members, there is no perceptible disruption in the case of a link failure, and the full bandwidth of the network remains available.
High performance from this new virtual datacenter core supports new high-speed servers and all other applications, and provides easy wireless access for staff. Now featuring increased bandwidth, low latency and greater convergence, Hefame’s new datacenter network is everything they hoped for.
Once again, we have successfully completed a major project with Allied Telesis. It was well planned, and strategically implemented to meet deadlines without any inconvenience.
Director of Information Systems,
Hefame
“We have substantially improved our backbone network, which easily handles the new system servers—thanks to the SBx908 GEN2 and the new 40 Gigabit stacking links. All our requirements, including 10Gbps fiber and copper connections, have been fully met,” says Amando Vela Vela, Director of Information Systems at Hefame. He continues, “In addition to improving our network speed, the core stack has simplified the network topology considerably. This means less issues, less time to manage, and smooth connections.”
The new design proved to be high-value, too—Hefame wanted to keep their older SwitchBlade x908 units, as they were still performing well, so these now function perfectly as distribution switches one layer down. That’s a true testament to the smart design and longevity of Allied Telesis networking products.
All this, and a future-proof design that can easily scale up to 100Gbps if the need arises.
New Capabilities Drive Continual Business Improvement
With high performance and improved disaster recovery, this upgrade allows Hefame to continue to run a seamless production and delivery business to pharmacies across Spain. The new, more powerful yet less complex network is robust, featuring increased convergence and more stability—leading to one satisfied customer. “Now the project is finished, we can say that it has been a total success, in which all of our expectations have been met,” says Manzanera.
The upgrade was painless, and all new systems run smoothly. As Vela Vela says, “Once again, we have successfully completed a major project with Allied Telesis. It was well planned, and strategically implemented to meet deadlines without any inconvenience.”
The new network core is future-proof to boot—Hefame can upgrade to a higher 100 Gigabit bandwidth at any time, thanks to the hot-swappable XEM 100G option. This ensures that the new technology supports Hefame’s business improvement and growth both now, and well into the future.
Now the project is finished, we can say that it has been a total success, in which all of our expectations have been met.
Communications and Security Manager,
Hefame
