About Beak & Johnston

Beak & Johnston is a leading Australian Food solutions company supplying domestic retail & food service industries as well as exporting a wide range of meats, cooked products, soups and sauces. They partner with many quality food retailers across Australia and around the world to deliver great food quickly and efficiently.

The Challenge:

“Technology is essential to the success of our business”

With top-level accreditations and a dedicated R&D team working with food technologists and chefs, everything Beak and Johnston do is focused on quality. And their approach is no different when it comes to information technology.

Their state-of-the-art processing plant and production facility is powered, automated and managed with the help of customised software.

As Richard Boyce, IT Manager, explains, "Technology is absolutely essential to the success of our business. From sales systems and inventory management, to production management and order reporting, our business depends on the very latest in technology."

"Furthermore, all our machinery is monitored and managed by a centralised computer system, whether it's weigh stations, grinders or mixing equipment."

Beak & Johnston's original legacy systems were beginning to age and were causing tremendous problems in terms of stability and performance. Their existing supplier advised that everything would need scrapping and replaced from scratch - a costly and disruptive prospect. That's when Beak & Johnston turned to TRT.

The solution:

A powerful and reliable IT solution

After assessing the existing infrastructure and ongoing business requirements, TRT proposed a powerful, reliable and cost-effective IBM solution that would leverage Beak & Johnston's existing systems and software. It not only fixed the immediate stability and performance problems without disruptions, but also catered for the long-term needs of the business.

TRT managed a seamless migration from the legacy HP2400 with HP-UX operating system to the IBM pSeries p5 52A Server and IBM Total Storage FastT700 Storage Server.

As Cameron Huysmans, TRT Technical Services Manager, explains, "We took control of the process from start to finish, migrating everything over to the new machine, including the associated storage."

After setting up the platform, TRT was engaged to maintain the system, with the ongoing monitoring to be carried out using Sentinel 3G.

The benefits:

“TRT takes ownership of a problem”

The IBM machine and infrastructure has proven to be a robust, fast and reliable solution, able to successfully run ongoing mission-critical business applications. As part of the service TRT provides to Beak & Johnston, the system is monitored 24/7, enabling any potential problems to be identified and rectified before they cause disruption.

"If the machine went down, our business would come to a grinding halt," says Richard Boyce.

"That's why the maintenance and support services from TRT are so essential. TRT takes ownership of a problem and do whatever necessary to fix it. They never try and pass on the responsibility to another vendor or supplier."

Beak & Johnston plan to expand their systems in the year ahead with the help of TRT, acquiring more power and storage as the business grows.

"We are extremely happy with TRT's service. All their people are great to work with and have excellent technical knowledge," concludes Boyce.