Juniper in the fruit and vegies market

Peter Dinham
Sunday, 28 August 2011 23:55

IT Industry - Deals

Australia's first fruit and vegetable supermarket chain, Harris Farm Markets, is looking to drive operational efficiency and stepping up its customer service with the deployment of an integrated Juniper-based networking solution for its stores and warehouses.

The solution is based around Juniper Networks SRX Series Services Gateways, and runs on the Junos operating system, which Harris Farm markets' says provides the company with a highly secure, reliable and cost-effective network to support its point-of-sale and inventory management applications. 

Harris Farm Markets IT Manager, Ian Lapid said deployment of the new network infrastructure is part of an IT upgrade program at 23 store and warehouse locations across New South Wales. The company is deploying SRX Series Services Gateways to integrate routing, switching and advanced security, with Juniper Networks AX411 Wireless Access Points used to support hand-held devices and CX111 Cellular Broadband Data Bridges to provide automatic fail-over to 3G wireless data connections if problems arise with the primary WAN link.

"We originally scoped the branch network for ourselves but IBM proposed a more cost-effective and functionally superior solution," Lapid said.

"The Juniper SRX Series consolidates enterprise-grade routing, switching and security on a single device, which reduced our capital cost. The Junos software delivers a level of functionality well in excess of what we had originally envisioned, whilst allowing us to simplify network management, which in turn reduces our operational costs."

According to VP Juniper Networks ANZ, Mark Iles, 'it's within the branches and on the shop floor where companies like Harris Farm Markets meet their customers and generate revenue. That means they need networking that is every bit as good as the head office, which is what the Juniper Networks SRX Series Services Gateways and their wireless LAN and WAN extensions are designed to achieve.'