No Snoozin' With Franchise Connectivity
Posted on: 16/08/2006
Capt'n Snooze franchise selects pacific internet for 70-site managed connectivity and security solution.
Internet (Australia), part of the Asia Pacific's largest telco-independent communications service provider (CSP) by geographic reach, Pacific Internet Limited (NASDAQ: PCNTF), has commenced a 70-site managed connectivity and security roll out for Capt'n Snooze, the national bedding franchise, as part of a 36 month contract.
"This is a great example of Pacific Internet's ability to bring the best of the connectivity and managed IT solutions to our customers. Such a contract demonstrates our ability to execute the strategic plan announced
in May 2006," said Phey Teck-Moh, President and CEO of Pacific Internet. Pacific Internet managing director Dennis Muscat said: "With Pacific Internet's SecureSite offering, Capt'n Snooze will have fully managed
high-end Cisco routers at their 70 stores to connect their private IP network. Pacific Internet pre-configures and delivers these routers and performs ongoing management and maintenance remotely."
Capt'n Snooze IT Manager Lionel Van Niekerk said: "SecureSite - Pacific Internet's managed connectivity and security offering -- is a huge relief for my IT department as we don't have to monitor each connection.
With Pacific Internet delivering our private IP network it also gives us complete flexibility -- if anything goes wrong they will notify us immediately and they have in-house technical skills to fix issues.
"Handing over the management of our network to Pacific Internet was a significant business decision but it will prove to be a powerful cost and resource saving venture," he said. Dennis Muscat said: "SecureSite addresses the important issue that SMBs generally don't have access to trained and skilled network, routing or security professionals on-site, yet security remains a critical concern for them*."
The October 2005 Pacific Internet Broadband Barometer research highlighted that 77% of small to medium businesses have broadband but the vast majority don't have integrated security within their internet connection or network. At this stage, their security tends to be simplistic, modem-based measures or software packaged firewalls. Yet, 52% of respondents named security of organisational data and financial transactions as their primary internet concern.
Techlink, one of Pacific Internet's important channel partners operating in Melbourne, approached Pacific Internet for support around this opportunity.
Dennis Muscat said: "The deal highlights the importance of Pacific Internet's channel partner program and our ability to work hand-in-hand with systems integrators to be successful in complex deals." Lionel Van Niekerk said: "We assessed numerous tier-one vendors but found that Pacific Internet best suited our business needs -- they're incredibly responsive and flexible."
The upgrade wasn't just a head office decision; franchisees were demanding more support and wanted to use IT to gain a competitive edge. The old set-up was mainly decentralised and outdated. "It was frustrating previously because 70% of our stores used unstable dial-up modems and virtual private networks and we could only gather sales figures over weekends. Constant drop-outs made it horrendous - we didn't have live information and could never tell how marketing campaigns were tracking without spending days retrieving ad-hoc data," he said.
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