With Cisco SONA, Retail Property Group Exceeds Expectations

Westfield Group aligns network vision with business goals for video conferencing; gains the bonus of IP telephony and rapid service rollouts.

The highly collaborative company culture led to an early reliance on technology, and each of the Westfield entities evolved its own network to tie together its local offices and to connect with regional networks. In 2000, Rick Gehringer was promoted to chief information officer (CIO) with the mission of standardizing the company's diverging technology foundation. "Our global business demanded effective communications to bring together management and employees from around the world," says Gehringer.

The Westfield team worked with PBM IT Solutions, a consulting firm with a long history of networking experience with the Westfield U.S. operation. Input was gathered from the regions and an architecture developed for the new global network. "The Cisco® Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) framework helped us meet all of Westfield's business objectives," says John Bristol, CTO for PBM IT Solutions. "A global network overlay ties together all four regions. LAN and WAN foundations are standardized and support a services layer for the company's mission-critical applications. The IT groups in the four regions now have standardized services for the critical company communications applications."