IMC Collective Intelligence provides Westfield Group with a tailored solution.
Initially brought in to complete a security audit for Westfield in November 2008, IMC Communications has since been engaged by Westfield to provide continuous technical and network consulting services, five days per week to the retail property giant.
As the world’s largest listed retail property group, the Westfield IT network needs to be highly secure to ensure privacy, productivity and reliability to its thousands of employees and customers.
IMC Communications was commissioned to conduct a firewall security audit for Westfield and provide recommendations to the Australian business on ways to tighten its IT security.
The findings were approved by Westfield and subsequently IMC was engaged to implement the recommendations due to the team’s specialised knowledge and capabilities required to cover the work.
The wheels were set in motion and IMC began implementing programs to tighten security, which included Firewall, Routing and Switching design, implementation and configuration management.
THE CHALLENGE
While the security project was progressing, Westfield had another major challenge: a number of strategic initiatives were taking place which required the attention of Westfield’s internal technical staff and some specialist external skills and experience.
Having so many projects in addition to the daily operational tasks of a busy network like Westfield’s meant they needed to access to highly-skilled people who could be onsite at short notice and who understood the inertia of Westfield’s business.
THE SOLUTION
IMC Communications tackled this challenge head-on by taking a team approach. Three IMC engineers were appointed to the project to share the knowledge and workload and to ensure maximum reliability.
One of the major benefits of this team approach was the collective knowledge, problem-solving and engineering know-how that was available for the project – this enabled bespoke solutions every step of the way to be created for Westfield.
“Our team was consistently involved at projects at an early stage, thus giving us more input and providing higher value based on the combined experience of the team supporting Westfield.
“We not only developed relationships with the Westfield network team, but we also got to know the rest of the IT department within Westfield, who gave excellent feedback on the support IMC provided to Westfield during our time there. We adhered to their internal IT practices and brought an extra element of professionalism to the table,” said Michael Martin, Systems Engineer.
IMC has been providing technical and network consulting services five days per week consistently since November 2008. Other services IMC provides to Westfield include software procurement, online asset management and EMC storage solutions.
IMC Communications continues to conduct audits of Westfield security at each of its shopping centres, providing recommendations and implementing upgrades.
BENEFITS
Using a team-based approach, IMC has shared the workload across four consultants, a strategy which provides value to Westfield in a number of ways:
1. Westfield gains access to a deeper available resource pool
2. The IMC resources are familiar with the Westfield IT environment, ensuring productivity the minute they arrive on-site
3. Westfield benefited from the collective knowledge of four specialists all applying their skills and knowledge to address network design, implementation and support challenges. Those specialists also tapped the knowledge of other IMC technical experts as and when needed
4. Westfield gains access to highly skilled people experienced in working on a variety of large networks
