HSIL, a leading sanitaryware company in India, marketing under the brand 'Hindware' enjoyed strong business growth in recent years as the economy prospered and consumer spending took off. The company began expanding its production capacities and was planning on entering into retail business of offering total home solutions and a target to double its turnovers in the next couple of years. B K Venkatram, Dy. General Manager for IT, found that HSIL's IT systems were inadequate to face these business challenges and keep pace with the business expansion plans.

Over the years, HSIL's IT systems had grown disparate. Its network, hardware, messaging and other communications systems were separate and poorly connected. The disparate systems included IBM/HP hardware, Cisco and D-Link network equipment, Oracle software and a home grown enterprise resource planning system, as well as an outsourced email solution. The poorly integrated IT systems could not deliver an efficient platform for supporting HSIL's business growth.

In March 2006, Venkatram decided to revamp HSIL's IT infrastructure. His goals were to rationalize and consolidate around fewer vendors, achieve seamless connectivity and greater cost efficiency in IT. ProCurve switches were selected to power the new HSIL network.

Venkatram wanted to consolidate the company's hardware on AIX and Windows Server systems. He also decided to use SAP software for enterprise resource planning and Lotus Domino for messaging and collaborative applications. Multiple HSIL manufacturing plants, trading warehouses and sales office locations across the country were to be connected with a HCL Infinet backbone through MPLS network.

But even as he started to put in place new, more powerful IT systems for HSIL, Venkatram was conscious that he had to make a fundamental decision on the network switching equipment. He envisioned a powerful reliable network as the foundation of a highly efficient communications infrastructure. HSIL's network had to be upgraded quickly and in terms of cost and management, it made sense to go with a vendor who could provide advanced yet cost-effective and easy-to-use equipment.

Instead of calling for a tender, Venkatram approached different switch vendors individually to discuss his requirements. He first talked to Cisco as HSIL was using Cisco routers, but found they were not flexible in cost and did not offer the kind of post-warranty support he was looking for.

Next he approached Foundry Networks. Cost was again an issue, and Foundry did not have a local presence in Hyderabad, where HSIL has its IT headquarter.

Finally, a discussion with a ProCurve representative convinced Venkatram that ProCurve Networking met his requirements best. "ProCurve stood out with its promise of excellent pricing and value-added support. What clinched the deal was its lifetime warranty♦."

From March 2006, Venkatram began an aggressive project to build a new Gigabit managed network for HSIL. The project called for the replacement of existing switches with 16 ProCurve 8-, 24- and 48port switches. The network switches at the HSIL Data Centre in Hyderabad were the first to be replaced. In the second phase, beginning September 2006, the switches at the Hyderabad plant were replaced by more powerful ProCurve switches.

The new network was built on ProCurve's Edge 2810 Layer 2, 2824 Basic Layer 3, and 2848 switches all connected to one ProCurve 3400 Layer 3 switch.

In the Data Centre, the server room on the sixth floor and the Administrative Office on the third floor are connected by fiber, while switches on the same floor are connected by copper. In the manufacturing plant, all switches are connected by fiber since distances between the switches exceed 100 meters.

HSIL's new network went live in October 2006. While Hindware had a 10/100 unmanaged network in the past, it now has a managed Gigabit network with the use of ProCurve gigabit switches.

Venkatram is fully satisfied with the performance of the ProCurve network. "There has been no problem - large or small - with the ProCurve switching equipment since deployment."

The gigabit-class ProCurve network provides the bandwidth and speed to keep pace with the communications needs of HSIL.

Going forward, Venkatram plans to extend deployment of the ProCurve switches to 30 new locations, covering all of HSIL's manufacturing plants and sales offices across the country. Once the full network is in place, Venkatram is confident he will be able to introduce more demanding applications such as VoIP, video conferencing and workflow collaboration.

One of Venkatram's key concerns was price-performance. On this score, the ProCurve switches which were very competitively priced against rival products delivered good value to HSIL. In addition, ProCurve's unique offer of lifetime warranty and unlimited free hardware and software upgrades for most of its products meant that HSIL did not have to worry about post warranty support and maintenance costs.