Sunsuper replaces core switches, builds capacity

Sunsuper has upgraded its dual core switches in move aimed at achieving ease of management and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

CIO for the superannuation organisation, Adrian Dixon, said the desire to upgrade was driven by an increase in demand for capacity.

“The primary motivators for us were around capacity and redundancy and that was a result of an acquisition made by our administrator,” Dixon said. “We’d effectively outgrown what we had and it was an opportunity for us to reconsider which platform we would use moving forward.”

Dixon said while the superannuation fund is a largely insourced operation, the decision to look to an outside vendor for the project was simple.

“The switch we were on had come to its end of life,” Dixon said. “It was near capacity and didn’t have the capability to work in the future.

“We went out and had a look at the marketplace. We had a list of criteria and wanted to dual switches that would provide that redundancy.”

Dixon chose to deploy with HP; a choice that wasn’t easy because of a contract with another vendor.

“We were going to go to our current vendor for a number of reasons, which made HP probably an interesting choice to say the least,” he said. “When we started evaluating the products, the HP one came out as the best one.”

Sunsuper completed the project at the end of 2010; installing A-series switches and virtual connect with flex-10 and an integrated resilient framework in six months.

Dixon said a return on investment wasn’t the main concern for the company. Rather, it was about long-term change for the company.

“It’s a difficult one to measure from a specific ROI perspective,” he said. “Typically, these kinds of assets would provide a return over three to five years, so at some point in that window we’d expect them to pay themselves back.”

Dixon said the deployment has put the company is in a stronger position due to its ability to support greater capacity.

“One of the bonuses was that it was seamless to the business, but as far as the capacity goes, we’re confident that we have the capacity and the redundancy to support the business moving forward,” Dixon said.

It’s a view also held by Sunsuper’s technical services manager, David Williams.

“Where we were in some instances reaching bottlenecks and those have been eliminated,” he said. “As is typical with this type of infrastructure, the most meaningful impact has been the lack of impact on the business. I don’t think anyone knew that things had changed.”

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