Ernst & Young Australia has inked a $2.5 million IT security deal to support a complete IP telephony rollout.
The deal with Enterasys Networks will be rolled out in stages and the first phase includes Enterasys C2 stackable switches at Ernst & Young offices in Sydney.
Ninety Matrix C2 high-speed switches with power over Ethernet will be the first installs, along with the Matrix N7 modular 7-slot chassis and XSR routers.
The second phase of the project will be the Secure Networks components and an acceptable use policy and user authentication scheme through the NetSight Atlas management platform.
Further Ernst & Young offices in Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Townsville and the Gold Coast will be upgraded in 2005.
Stephen Arnold, Ernst & Young CIO, said the company wanted a standards-based system and was not interested in a proprietary IP solution. "Network security has become critically important to us, but it must be implemented in a way which doesn't slow down our business," Arnold said.
"We selected the Matrix C2 switches to bring the full benefit of Secure Networks to the edge of our network; combined with Enterasys switches and granular policy control it gives us a dynamic security posture that grows and adjusts with the firm while enabling us to increase network and business performance."
According to Arnold, the tender was split into separate voice and data components to allow them to identify the most secure IP telephony solution around today. Enterasys was selected because of its ability to deliver productivity improvements through IT efficiencies.
"No other vendor was able to deliver on our security and redundancy requirements, while also supporting our voice requirements - these were the critical points of differentiation."
John Roese, CTO of Enterasys, said the decision Ernst & Young made to deploy IP telephony effectively means its network has doubled in size through just one technology decision.
"Now for as many people as it has the company has actually doubled the port count of the infrastructure," Roese said.