Situation
Queensland Racing Limited is the peak control body for the thoroughbred racing industry in Queensland. It regulates, manages, and coordinates racing in the state and employs some 200 people in its head office and three regional offices.
When Queensland Racing updated to a thin client environment for its regional offices, it had to replace its current WAN as it no longer fit the business needs and risk tolerance. In addition it was costly to maintain, particularly in regards to its low bandwidth. As David Rowan explains "it was difficult for staff to perform their daily work with the speed that was available". He adds, "we needed a faster and cheaper solution and one which better met our risk tolerance needs."
Compounding the problem for Queensland Racing was its location in Deagon, some 20Km from Brisbane. At that distance from the city, any land based high speed connection has a high price tag attached to it.
Solution
With his thin client network already in place, David approached Brennan for help in obtaining a connectivity solution that would meet Queensland Racing's business needs at a reasonable price. The solution Brennan proposed was a wireless connection which is facilitated by a six metre antenna sited on the roof of the Queensland Racing building. This antenna was needed to give a line of sight link to the nearest accessible wireless node. Damien Neale, Account Manager at Brennan explains, "Brennan supplied and maintains the hardware and we offer 24/7 support for the connection and proactively monitor all the links." He adds, "we haven't had any problems with the solution to date, it's all working very well".
Currently Queensland Racing uses just 3 Mbps of the 10 Mbps bandwidth available to it, so it has plenty of room to grow in the future.
Benefits
When it was first proposed, David admits to having been dubious about the advisability of moving to a wireless solution. However he soon changed his mind. "The assurances and references I was given led me to believe it was worth trying and the results have been great - I'm a convert!" he enthuses.
"The user experience has been good and our users have responded well to the increase in speed and performance, " he says. "The biggest thing, however, is that the change was transparent to them. There was very little interference and disruption and it just works."
For Queensland Racing itself, the benefits are significant. "We have had a 75 per cent cost reduction over the service we replaced and a four fold speed increase across our WAN." David continues, "we've been able to leverage our thin client solution which has allowed us to rationalise hardware at regional sites. At head office, because costs are down dramatically, we have been able to put in a redundant fail over link to the internet where a reliable internet connection is critical. In the past we simply couldn't afford to have a redundant link which left us exposed to an undesirable level of risk."
"We are thrilled with the solution we have and with the ability to scale up, we now have plans to expand our use in the future. These plans include increasing the bandwidth to facilitate video streaming from the website and implementing a hosted disaster recovery site remotely accessible via the main VPN WAN link," says David. "None of these would have been possible before we moved to the Brennan wireless solution."
