ICT upgrade drives Yokohama Tyre to cloud

NTT Communications provided networking, security, Internet and data centre services

Yokohama Tyre Australia is moving to the cloud following a recent ICT upgrade, according to the company’s IT manager, Duance Hum.

Yokohama Tyre has operated as a tyre distributor in Australia since 1976, importing tyres from Asia. It has 85 retail franchisee businesses, 11 of its own stores and five warehouses.

“With the cloud platform, we are able to respond to the needs of various departments more efficiently and quicker,” Hum told Computerworld Australia.

While much can be moved to the cloud, Hum said the company plans to keep accounting on premise because the information is more sensitive and because it operates its ERP system on an AS/400 platform, he said.

The move wouldn’t have been possible without a recent ICT upgrade including networking, security, Internet and data centre services from NTT Communications, Hum said. NTT, a Japanese telco, has lately expanded its presence in Australia.

“Prior to the upgrade we operated our servers from one of our warehouses,” said Hum. “Unfortunately we experienced regular evacuations which wreaked havoc on our system as the servers had to be taken offline each time.”

With a new system, Yokohama sought to minimise the impact of localised system outages, Hum said.

Also, the tyre company wanted to reduce the number of vendors it worked with. Dealing with a variety of vendors rather than a single supplier had made for a “disjointed” experience on IT projects.

“Whilst we were approached by various providers,” including Telstra and Optus, NTT presented “a complete solution that allowed us to focus on our business requirements,” Hum said. He also found NTT easy to reach when any business questions arose.

The NTT ICT system has been in place for one-and-a-half years, he said.

Hum said there were “some initial teething problems” to do with “users not being trained with certain technologies being integrated at the same time”, but the NTT system has “worked brilliantly” since then. Importantly, Yokohama’s various locations have worked “without interruption to their critical business functions,” he said.

Meanwhile, working with just one supplier has given the company “a single point of contact ... that we can engage and better manage projects.”

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Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU, or take part in the Computerworld conversation on LinkedIn: Computerworld Australia

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Tags internetNetworkingICTIT managerNTT CommunicationsYokohoma Tyre Australia

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