Enterprise

Recently, BSA LifeStructures has been recognized for its 30 years of leadership by such publications as Modern Healthcare, World Architecture and Building Design and Construction Magazine. Headquartered in Indianapolis with an office in Chicago,BSA LifeStructures has experienced rapid growth.

The challenge
With the success of the core architectural business, coupled with the growth of family companies in interior design and document and facility management, the network infrastructure began to show its limits. Large file transfers, generated for three dimensional walkthroughs and flyovers, would often bring network performance to a crawl.

To address this specific situation and position the company for future growth, Brett Bonenberger, BSA LifeStructure’s Chief Information Officer, formulated his next generation network requirements. He determined that the network must be reliable, stable and support high availability. It must also have 10/100/1000 Mbps for workstation connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet and Layer 3 in the core with support of 802.1x or token authentication, and ease of management.

The solution

BSA LifeStructures chose an Alcatel solution based on the OmniSwitch 8800 (OS8800) and the Alcatel Operating System (AOS). The fully redundant OmniSwitch 8800 is able to provide the hardware redundancy for high availability, while the Alcatel Operating System leverages Smart Continuous Switching that allows the OS8800 to learn new flows even during a management module failure. In addition, BSA LifeStructures network comprises eight 10/100/1000 VLANs for hosts connectivity with a routed, load-balancing, multi-gig backbone running ECMP OSPF protocol.

With the Alcatel Operating System and OmniVista Network Management Software, BSA LifeStructures is able to manage the network from a single workstation—provisioning complex QoS configurations with one mouse click.

Why Alcatel?
BSA LifeStructures entertained responses from several manufacturers. Each response was written from that company’s point of view, using their nomenclature. Melsernet Inc., an Alcatel business partner in Indianapolis, translated the competition’s offerings into a common language. This non-biased overview allowed Bonenberger to make his decision on the features and performance that he envisioned for his network and its evolution.

After discovering that the remaining two offers met his requirements, it came down to cost. “Cisco was so much higher in price than Alcatel, and we were getting the same thing that we were offered from Cisco, so it was easy to choose Alcatel.” With the cost savings of the purchase, BSA LifeStructures was able to implement a server pilot over six months earlier than if it had chosen differently.

It wasn’t just a matter of ensuring that they were receiving the best value for their money. “The level of attention given to us by Melsernet and Alcatel was far and above superior to the competition,” Bonenberger said. “We knew we had a business partner and not just a product. There were no surprises. We got exactly what we thought we would.”

The future
”We are seriously looking at wireless LAN now,” said Bonenberger, recognizing that the Alcatel wireless LAN product family boasts the strongest security story in the industry.

The company is also going to look into the server load balancing capability of the OmniSwitch 8800. “It may be able to help us support our document management subsidiary’s phenomenal growth,” he said.

Client #1: Health Care
Client #2: Enterprise
Client #3: Education