national car rental establishing the right infrastructure © bt plc 2004
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national car rental national car rental accesses booking data faster with new global wide area network with its new global ip virtual private network based on bt multi-protocol label switching national car rental is transferring greater volumes of data at faster speeds as a result it is processing bookings more quickly and offering its worldwide customers an improved service improve delivery of services to global customers like many areas of international business travel the car rental market has not been immune to the effects of september 11 to increase its margin and prospects for growth during this economic slowdown national car rental the trading name of parent company anc rental corporation has been focused on improving the delivery of services to its worldwide customer base national is a leader in the car rental market it covers over 3000 rental locations with operations in europe the united states latin america the caribbean asia pacific africa and australia it runs a fleet of
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national car rental a global wide area network was rolled out linking eight countries to the leicester hub the plan was that this would support the fast and effective delivery of point-of-sale services and allow easy access to branch information work instructions and company procedures increase network capacity reduce latency save money however the system soon became overloaded creating delays in the transmission of data and the exchange of information across the network `though the network could support basic functionality for car rental management it didn t allow much beyond recording rental transactions and customer data says chris higgins european it manager national car rental the infrastructure had to robustly support its intranet facilities like email so that branches could share business intelligence be better informed and standardise working practices importantly the new networks also had to have the capacity to accommodate a potential convergence of voice and data in the fut
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national car rental eight countries connected to leicester uk hq the new global wide area network based on mpls offers `any site-to-any site connectivity rather than the previous `hub and spokes set-up now a car rental site in one country can communicate directly with a site in another country without being routed via the leicester hub saving time and money us host sites are linked to the leicester headquarters which also serves data communications in seven european countries australia is connected with bt remote access to the mpls network australians intending to holiday in europe can now make hassle-free bookings from down under standardisation of applications national previously operated different erp applications in the uk and abroad but it has now standardised its business connectivity requirements on bt s global mpls platform geac smartstream the preferred erp financials package for the company s uk operations is now supported and used across the business the network has helped
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national car rental overall system resilience has improved with isdn backup and the removal of any potential single point of failure improved customer service levels chris higgins confirms that customer service levels have risen considerably `we have gained a more resilient communications network that offers real-time data transfer so when a customer rings from any location they can get a faster quote than ever before better management of costs though the contractual price was important it wasn t over-riding `we were more concerned about getting value using the proper solution for the business says chris higgins `costs can now be managed better `bt mpls provides a more reliable flexible and cost-effective ip network to meet the changing and growing demands of national says bt s paul wroe the network operates on a fixed cost model so there is greater visibility it s also much easier to plan budget changes and extensions to the network ability to add new sites further functionality
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national car rental uk branch network replaced prior to tendering for the international network upgrade national tendered for the replacement of its uk network because bt was able to offer an easily expandable network architecture with annual cost savings and greater functionality across rental sites it won this contract worth £2.5m over a three-year period the legacy system offering mostly low-speed point-to-point links between 160 branches and the leicester hq was replaced with bt equip for data handling and bt embark for voice while national may look to converge its uk voice and data networks in the future it is has no immediate plans to do so the bt equip package does allow for an easy migration should it be required key results · managed bt multi-protocol label switching ip vpn · enhanced resilience and scalability supporting increased data exchange at quicker speeds · faster turn over of customers · reduced cost but higher performance · potential to prioritise time-sensitive
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national car rental features available on the bt mpls network include · multiple application classes of service backed by service level guarantees · choice of cisco cpe fully managed by bt · application prioritisation · flexible access options · leased line access up to t3/e3 for class 1 2 and 3 · proactive monitoring · 24/7 management option including all cpe and a unique automated global router confirmation tool · reduced latency to increase application performance · dual-links for resilience and isdn backup for business continuity · dynamic routing at each site · scalability for voip and video on the uk side bt equip consists of a main 8mbps connection with a 4mbps lllbackup circuit at the host site the rest of the uk branch sites were provided with 64kbps 128kbps or 2mbit lllconnections and back-up further information please contact us on freefone 0800 389 7263 page 6 of 6 establishing the right infrastructure © bt plc 2004
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