TRT partners with AWB to help create a robust infrastructure across their business.
About AWB
AWB Limited is Australia's leading agribusiness with strong positions in grain trading, rural and financial services. They employ more than 2,500 people and service more than 110,000 customers across Australia and around the world. AWB offers three core business streams: Landmark Rural Services, Landmark Financial Services and Commodity Management.
The Challenge:
"Consolidate systems into one unified solution"
A period of strong growth and diversification for AWB over the past four years, including the acquisition of Landmark, meant that AWB had two separate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems across the business.
To enhance customer service and drive business efficiencies, AWB embarked on a major project to consolidate their systems into one unified solution across the business.
"A key IT project for the AWB organization, it is large in terms of the size of infrastructure required, plus it impacts almost all business users across all our sites nationally and internationally," noted Nick Balasopoulos – Senior Infrastructure Engineer: Server and Storage at AWB.
With several business-critical business applications, including SAP, required to run across the platform, there was no room for downtime, delays or reliability issues.
The Solution:
"TRT was so refreshing to work with"
A major component of the project was for TRT to implement the necessary enterprise infrastructure, comprising AIX servers and SAN based storage. This was achieved through solid technical design, thorough planning and timely implementation.
By establishing a robust infrastructure platform, this allowed the organisation to confidently being the upgrade of the AWB and Landmark ERP systems, which the business views as being a key strategy for both customer and business management.
TRT were engaged as the infrastructure services partner of this Enterprise Project, they successfully delivered the appropriate set of user environments as well as the necessary storage and data backup solution.
"We chose TRT because of their proven expertise in midrange systems - particularly with AIX and IBM hardware. They also had a proven track record with similar projects in the past.
The feedback we've had from our team from the beginning of this project is that TRT were so refreshing to work with. They all had a great attitude. Their expertise and willingness to assist us to deliver the project and meet any technical challenges met our expectations," said Nick Balasopoulos.
The Benefits:
"It's been a real team effort"
"The project was delivered well on time, which in turn allowed our business users to commence their application implementation project with no delays. In fact they were able to start earlier than expected.
TRT had great communication throughout the project. Everything was transparent. Nothing was hidden which meant issues were resolved fast and there were no delays," continued Nick Balasopoulos.
Given the success of the implementation of the new infrastructure including AIX servers and storage, TRT have also been selected to take on the ongoing management of the AWB Unix infrastructure from an operational support requirement.
"Overall it's been a real team effort. The relationship between AWB and TRT has continued to grow strong over recent months, and we're looking forward to developing this partnership into the future."