Press Release
Easynet takes a bite at the food and drink industry’s corporate networks market
10/10/2005
Customers from the food and drink industry across Europe have approached Easynet to supply IP networks and hosting capacity to give their organisations a strong competitive edge. Easynet has identified several of its European customers for whom its IP network and hosting capabilities have driven new business efficiencies and improved performance. These include City Inns, Campina, Kellogg’s Italia S.p.A, Diageo S.p.A, Seda Solubles, Avenance and Bravilor Bonamat.
Easynet’s food and drink industry customers are finding that advanced networking capabilities such as MPLS VPNs and secure hosting services can instantly improve and dramatically increase supply chain efficiencies; synchronise warehouse and delivery data; improve the flow of information between the organisation and its suppliers; and enable them to provide a fast response to changing customer requirements.
In the Netherlands, Easynet has developed an integrated hosting environment for dairy giant Campina. All Campina sites are centrally hosted, with access to a single content management system. This structure increases manageability, results in uniform communication and ensures guaranteed availability. The contract with Easynet has also enabled Campina to achieve considerable economies of scale.
Easynet provides Campina with 24-hour support and management for hosting and security, alongside high-level guarantees for uptime, availability and respond and restore times. The continuous monitoring of all systems results in an extremely reliable hosting environment.
Easynet also hosts the new extranet commissioned by DMV International for its international customer base, as well as MyCampina.com, the website on which the member dairy farmers of Campina can retrieve details of the milk supplied by them, as well as accessing advice, calculation modules, news, backgrounds, a discussion forum and a two-way supply and demand application.
Herman de Jager, ICT manager at Campina, said of the system, “For two years, now, Campina has been outsourcing its hosting environment to Easynet. We opted for Easynet because of the company’s expertise in the field of complex hosting solutions. By using the advanced data centre operated by Easynet, all Campina websites are permanently and rapidly available to users, customers and our dairy farmers. In addition, thanks to the central hosting platform, we have achieved considerable economies of scale, that have lowered ICT costs.”
Easynet’s chief executive officer, David Rowe, said: “The food and drink industry is facing issues common to the retail industry in general, such as falling sales and margin pressures within a fiercely competitive environment. Add to this the crucial requirement within this industry for tight, faultless supply chain management, and the pressures point to a focus on key business drivers and inevitably an overhaul of existing IT strategy. This is where our customers are finding that IP networks and centralised hosting capabilities come into their own.”