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The Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative (IFFCO) is the world's
largest fertilizer cooperative, and the largest producer of chemical fertilizers
in India. Established in 1967 as a collective initiative of the farmers of the
country, IFFCO today boasts of annual sales of over Rs 9,700 crore, and markets
its products through more than 37,300 Cooperative Societies and 165 Farmers'
Service Centers across India.
Over the years, as IFFCO emerged as the largest producer of
fertilizers in the country, the scale and spread of its operations demanded
best-of-breed interconnectivity between plants and offices for efficient sharing
of data. In 2001, IFFCO initiated a complete network upgrade to meet several
strategic objectives and engaged Cisco for the purpose. Informs SC Mittal,
senior general manager, IFFCO, "Spurred by the rapid increase in business
volume, IFFCO was keen to revamp its IT infrastructure and put in place a
unified network that would facilitate information sharing among various
cooperative members."
Another objective was to build a foundation for future IP
services and to prepare for the convergence of data and voice over a common
network backbone. A third objective was to accommodate growth, enabling IFFCO to
connect a growing base of cooperative offices across India, while assuring high
application performance for a wide range of application traffic
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| At
a Glance |
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Challenges
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Integrating information resources on a single communication network
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Providing an integrated voice and data solution for resource sharing
across offices
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Minimizing administrative expense through remote management of information
resources
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Running web-based applications in order to provide new services to members
Solution
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Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISR)
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Catalyst range of multi-layer switches-6500 Series, 4500 Series and 2950
Series
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Cisco Call Manager and 200 hard phones
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VT Advantage communication solution for video functionality over IP phones
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Cisco PIX series of dedicated firewall appliances and Intrusion Prevention
System (IPS)
Benefits
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Better resource utilization and enhancement of overall productivity
through sharing of information resources
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Architecture available for successful convergence of data, voice and video |
The WAN architecture deployed by Cisco encompassed 80 locations,
including IFFCO's Kandla plant and some regional and area offices. The network
runs on point-to-point leased links and MPLS VPN links, and is powered by the
Integrated Service Routers (ISR) and the Catalyst range of multi-layer switches-6500
Series, 4500 Series and 2950 Series. The Cisco Catalyst LAN switches at the
access layer extend control from the network core to the edge, with intelligent
network services, including advanced Quality of Services (QoS), scalable
performance, comprehensive security and manageability.
As part of the end-to-end IP architecture, Cisco installed 200
hard phones and the VT Advantage communication solution at some locations for
providing the video telephony functionality to Unified IP phones. In addition,
Cisco deployed wireless access points, the PIX series of dedicated firewall
appliances and the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) for securing the network.
With this interconnectivity, IFFCO offices and plants can now efficiently
exchange production information and report results online. The network also
supports ERP-like applications and mail messaging that enhances the organization's
productivity.
The network has facilitated the deployment of centralized
applications, the consolidation of data and resources, assets monitoring, virus
management, version control, standardization of business processes, production
and sales performance monitoring and faster policy communication etc. Eighty
locations of IFFCO are now interconnected over WAN.
Rajneesh De
rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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