FIELD REPORT
GASTON BROWN SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR, ITW WELDING
At ITW Welding, Speed Sparks Success Advanced IT was the key to an Ohio company’s continued growth. THE CHALLENGE: In the welding industry, Troy, Ohio–based ITW Welding is a superstar. A key part of the global manufacturing company Illinois Tool Works, ITW Welding is a group of companies that includes leading manufacturers of metals, equipment, welding components, and accessories for a wide variety of applications. As ITW Welding grew and thrived, however, success stressed its technology infrastructure. Growing communication needs for its many sites were overwhelming its costly legacy T1 connection. The T1 service, delivering bandwidth in the range of 1.5 Mbps, wasn’t nearly robust enough to handle the rollout of a large-scale Cisco Unity voice over IP (VoIP) system to 1,500 employees across five sites. That shortcoming had the potential to affect the company’s growth. “As with most businesses, information technology is a critical component of our evolving operations and success going forward,” explains Gaston Brown, systems administrator. “We 4
Spring 2014
needed to access advanced Internet-based applications and integrate more with other business units across the ITW Welding family. Our T1’s limitations stood in the way of our progress.”
Our T1's limitations stood in the way of our progress. THE SOLUTION: Already a Time Warner Cable Business Class (TWCBC) customer since 2005, ITW Welding now turned to TWCBC for an up to 100 Mbps point-topoint Ethernet Private Line (EPL) link from the company’s headquarters to its consumer welding production facilities across town. In addition to security and reliability, the EPL service provides an Ethernet virtual connection that delivers speeds from 5 Mbps up to 10
Gbps. ITW Welding also relies on a TWCBC Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) service to power a site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) between its headquarters and its Appleton, Wisconsin, locations. With a simple phone call, Brown upgraded ITW Welding’s DIA service from 5 Mbps to 20 and then to 25 Mbps. The DIA service provides private, redundant connectivity as well as fast speeds and a robust bandwidth to maximize the performance of VPNs and VoIP services.
THE RESULT: The cost has decreased, and productivity and customer service are measurably improved. • Running VoIP over the new high-speed infrastructure helps cut local and longdistance phone bills. • The growing use of video conferencing between locations helps ITW Welding save on travel costs and boost productivity. • The DIA upgrade answers the growing bandwidth needs of the company’s dispersed sales force and network of 10 US warehouses, as well as the need to increase access to critical applications and data for major remote sites. • ITW Welding is able to maintain customer service at a world-class level. “Having the ability to provide our locations and people high-speed and reliable access to our servers means we’re able to enter and fulfill orders accurately and on time,” Brown says. “And being able to keep our service up 24/7/365 is obviously critical to meeting our customers' needs and driving our success. “We need reliable, high-quality connections to help meet all our business needs. Time Warner Cable Business Class makes it easy.”
SHARE YOUR STORY!
How did you partner with TWCBC to SOLVE your technology issues? Share your company’s story for a chance to be featured in an upcoming issue of SOLVE. Visit business.twc.com/nomination to share your story.
