Investment in Foundry Networks 10 Gigabit Ethernet and PoE FastIron Switches Prepares Prodrive for the Future as Data Growth Continues

June 12, 2008 - Foundry Networks®, Inc., a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced that Prodrive, the motorsport and automotive engineering group, has undertaken a complete campus LAN upgrade project installing its FastIron® SX Layer 2/3 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) and FastIron Edge Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches at its Banbury headquarters. The new Foundry switching infrastructure has been installed to support the company’s operations by delivering additional bandwidth and network functionality, enabling Prodrive to deploy additional IP-based applications, such as Voice over IP (VoIP).

Prodrive designs, builds and runs motorsport and vehicle technology products and programs for large automotive manufacturers and private race teams. Famous for its motorsport heritage, Prodrive runs the Subaru World Rally Team and the Aston Martin Racing team. Hugely successful, both on the race track and commercially, Prodrive has won more than 100 international rallies and six World Rally Championships with Subaru, five British Touring Car Championships with BMW, Alfa Romeo and Ford, and was runner up in the F1 Constructors’ Championships 2004 with the BAR Honda F1 Team, which it managed at that time. Similarly, since its inception in 1984 by current chairman and chief executive, David Richards, the business has grown to employ approximately 1,000 staff internationally with annual sales of more than GBP120 million.

Graham Brook, Prodrive’s head of IT, says, “While most people know Prodrive designs and builds racing cars, and runs motorsport teams, it is perhaps less well known that, through our automotive technology division, we also develop niche cars and new technology for performance-oriented road vehicles. This covers a whole range of activities from working with car manufacturers to produce high-performance and limited editions of existing cars to support with vehicle homologation.”

With the dramatic growth of data traffic over the years, Prodrive has upgraded its Banbury network installing multiple 10GbE FastIron SX Layer 2/3 switches for their campus core, in the main administrative buildings and technology centers, with 18 FastIron PoE Edge switches installed campus-wide throughout eight buildings where rally and racing cars are designed, manufactured and prepared for events. Dual fiber links connect all the buildings to ensure resilience and maximize bandwidth capabilities.

Brook explains, “Our old infrastructure, while reliable, was already four-years-old, and starting to show the strain of increased traffic. We only had 100 Mbps connections to the desktop, a simple Layer 2 architecture, no Quality of Service and only twin gigabit links between the core switches. This project is all about preparing Prodrive for the future given the huge growth in IP-based traffic.”

Prodrive reviewed technology from all the main networking vendors choosing Foundry for two main reasons. Brook explains, “Firstly, we wanted to move data about quickly with no compromises. Foundry focuses on this. It offers best-of-breed equipment with switching done in hardware so no degradation in performance. Secondly, Foundry’s staff was very supportive in helping us specify the solution and plan the migration.”

Given that Prodrive designs and builds its race and rally cars under a process of continual improvement, the demands placed on the network are considerable. Growth in data traffic has been exponential over the past few years and is expected to continue as files sizes get ever bigger and more applications are added to the infrastructure. Huge quantities of design, simulation and telemetry information is generated which needs to be shared around the campus network.

As an example, Prodrive is using engineering systems from PTC, Dassault and Unigraphics to design components for the rally and race cars which various CNC machine tools then manufacture on campus. Historically, parts were designed in isolation from each other. Today, the process is radically different as individual parts are designed, grouped into assemblies and then into master assemblies to actually make up a vehicle. These models become huge and it is a data-intensive task to pull off servers. Brook says, “Upgrading the network core between buildings to 10 gigabit Ethernet and presenting gigabit to the desktop enables the design engineers to make the most of their powerful workstations, improves workflow processes and improves collaboration with the manufacturing departments.”

The network upgrade is delivering immediate performance improvements for engineers, adding more bandwidth so new IP devices and applications can be added (without slowing the network), enabling Layer 3 routing functionality to improve resilience, and preparing the company for VoIP through the Quality of Service (QoS) and PoE functionality included in the FastIron switches. Brook explains, “We want to take advantage of having a high-performance network infrastructure, and the investment made in it, by layering on new applications like VoIP which we are in the process of doing. As we are a multinational business, clearly VoIP has many benefits in terms of collaborative and efficient working across sites through application sharing and video conferencing.”

Brook concludes, “The network is the unsung hero behind everything. I didn’t want to wait to upgrade our network until we had a problem, since employees need their computers to do their jobs. And for me, this is the measure of the project’s success. The new network is in, doing its job, adding the capacity we needed, and therefore delivering exactly what we expected and wanted.”

Moving forward, Prodrive is planning to upgrade the network at its other UK site in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, home to the automotive technology division.
 
Bob Schiff, Foundry’s vice president and general manager, Enterprise Business Unit, says, “Prodrive is a winning organization which needs to constantly innovate and push the boundaries to ensure it stays ahead. It is a no-compromise performance motorsport leader. We’re delighted it recognized in our technology the qualities of no-compromise performance too and we’re incredibly pleased to have been selected as its network partner.”