Food giant Campbell Arnott's has implemented a $4 million network-based IP virtual private network (VPN) using AT&T as the solution provider.

Campbell Arnott’s, a unit of Campbell Soup Company, selected AT&T to provide a communications network linking its sales, distribution, manufacturing, warehousing and administrative operations throughout the Asia Pacific region.

Under the three-year, US$3 million (AU$3.96 million) contract Campbell Arnott’s has also outsourced the management of the network to AT&T.

The network is based on AT&T Enhanced Virtual Private Network (EVPN) Services and connects 28 locations in Asia Pacific. It also interconnects with other Campbell’s Enhanced VPN networks in Europe and North America.

The network provides employees across the Asia Pacific region with access to critical business applications residing in the company’s Asia Pacific head office located in Sydney. Additionally the network supports a number of other applications including email and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The network is currently carrying live VoIP traffic between several of Campbell Arnott’s Australian offices.

The new network’s architecture ensures that real-time traffic such as VoIP and critical business application traffic have priority over email, web browsing and other less important traffic. Efficiency and productivity gains have been achieved, response times reduced and Campbell Arnott’s now has improved access to its financial, manufacturing and administrative applications.

“Our regional sites in Asia were challenged for bandwidth,” said Craig Garvin, chief information officer, Campbell Arnott’s Asia Pacific. “Response times accessing our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system had generally been slow. By using AT&T EVPN Services we are able to prioritise our core business applications over less critical applications and improve the productivity for our users. We are also leveraging the network to carry VoIP traffic, which allows us to converge voice and data traffic over a single network for greater flexibility.”

By outsourcing the network management to AT&T, Campbell Arnott’s has been able to utilise its internal IT staff to more project-based activities. AT&T monitors and manages the network performance around the clock according to the defined proactive Service Level Agreements.