Connectivity overhaul boosts employee productivity and business continuity for ALD Automotive

Leasing and fleet management company ALD Automotive has improved employee productivity by boosting capacity and business continuity on its connectivity infrastructure, while at the same time reducing networking costs.

The company, which operates 50,000 vehicles in the UK and is part of financial services group, Société Générale, has implemented a new Wide Area Network (WAN) that gives 100 office and home based staff more reliable access to essential business applications including its FleetWare fleet management system.

The new solution, implemented by managed WAN, Internet services and hosting specialist CI-Net is designed to provide improvements over ALD Automotive’s previous MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) network.

Rob Reeskamp, IT manager, said “We’re getting greater bandwidth with more resilience, which means we’re more confident that staff in our regional sites and working from home can access corporate IT systems based in our Bristol head office – even at peak times, when we previously ran the risk of disruption due to delays and time outs using our older WAN set up.

“It also means we get more reliability when making voice calls on the network.”

As part of the network revamp, 50 home based workers, who still rely on an older Virtual Private Network (VPN), are gradually being given ADSL connections into the new WAN with Stonegate devices providing encryption.

“Home workers will get improved connectivity because their new links are being set up to come straight into the network via one of CI-Net’s data centre locations - without going over the Internet. This will reduce latency and contention and means they can start making voice calls over the network, enabling us to reduce our telephone costs” added Reeskamp.