ATC’s Work with The Herb Chambers Companies Wins 2017 Channel Partners 360⁰ Award
Austin, TX – September 27, 2017 – For the 4th time in four years, and twice now in 2017, ATC has been recognized for telecom excellence. ATC and specifically Darren DeMartino’s work with The Herb Chambers Companies was selected last night (Sept. 26th) as a Channel Partners 360° Business Value Award winner. Twelve winners were honored during an awards reception at the Fall 2017 Channel Partners Evolution conference in Austin, TX. Channel Partners is the leading industry resource for indirect sales channels offering IT and telecom systems and services.
“Our 2017 Fall Channel Partners 360° Business Value Awards winners go the extra mile,” said Lorna Garey, editor in chief of Channel Partners. “Just as our fall event is tightly focused on education to advance the business and intimate networking ops, this batch of winners showed a real commitment to pushing customers ahead with core technologies and an eye to sustainability.”
Channel Partners 360° Business Value Awards winners are selected by a panel of editors based on real-world case studies that illustrate how the partner is using the convergence of IT and telecom services to create business value for its customers.
Herb Chambers owns one of the largest auto sales groups in the country. His 55 dealerships dominate eastern Massachusetts, especially for customers who covet luxury brands like Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Audi, Alfa Romeo, BMW, Cadillac, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Porsche, Maserati and Lamborghini.
Here’s a look at the project snapshot:
What was the customer’s business need?
New car technologies are transforming the automotive sector, with major implications for automotive dealerships. Today’s car has the computing power of 20 personal computers, features about 100 million lines of programming code, and processes up to 25 gigabytes of data an hour.* While automotive digital technology has traditionally focused on optimizing the vehicle’s internal functions, attention is now turning to developing the car’s ability to “phone home” and connect with the manufacturer to conduct diagnostics tests. This is the connected car—a vehicle able to optimize its own maintenance as well as the convenience and dealership experience for the owners.
“A lot of the technical requirements and diagnostic equipment we’re mandated to have (by the manufacturers) in order to communicate back and forth with them is very bandwidth intensive,” says Nicolas Gennetti, Director of Information Systems at The Herb Chambers Companies. As a result, many of the luxury brands are now requiring dealerships to have certain levels of bandwidth with redundancy built in from a second ISP.
*McKinsey & Company
How did you address the customer’s business need with technology? What solution did you recommend?
Herb Chambers was utilizing an MPLS network for Internet connectivity and communications with corporate data centers. One data center is local in Massachusetts with the other in Chicago, IL. Connectivity at the dealerships was limited to T1s and bundled T1s—not nearly enough bandwidth for today’s “connected” car and the needs of dealerships regardless of manufacturer brand.
The recommended solution included a more robust MPLS network with a minimum of 50MB metro Ethernet fiber connectivity for all dealership locations. The solution also included an SD-WAN deployment via Cisco Meraki edge devices. The selected provider for the new, more robust MPLS backbone was Nitel. Netwolves provides the backup broadband circuits at all locations, and the Meraki solution delivers automatic failover within a “hot-hot” environment where both the fiber circuit and broadband circuit are live at all times and working collectively. The backup circuit is not idle. In fact, the broadband circuits are also providing Internet for the dealership “guest” network. The data centers also received connectivity upgrades to 100MB of fiber.
What are the results?
Carrier services and monthly costs remained the same despite significant network upgrades. With a minimum bandwidth increase of 1,500% at all dealership locations, the project has correspondingly increased efficiencies and productivity levels to advance the overall customer experience by providing better, faster and quicker service. Diagnostic determinations for maintenance and repair are resolved much more rapidly and service wait times have decreased.
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