Amer Sports scores improved network efficiency

Amer Sports, the Finnish sports equipment manufacturer that owns the Salomon, Wilson, Atomic, Suunto, Precor, ArcTeryx and Mavic brands, has improved bandwidth capacity at reduced cost by utilising multiple, local carriers across its geographically diverse global operations.

Reliance Globalcom has been working with Amer Sports since 2006, providing a hybrid VNO procured, MPLS network connecting over 70 sites across 26 countries, including China, Hong Kong, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Malaysia as well as Brazil, Mexico, the US and multiple European countries.

Following an RFP, Amer Sports signed a new, four-year, multi-million Euro contract extension with Reliance Globalcom to increase the scalability and effectiveness of the company’s international network by seamlessly integrating a series of new MPLS providers across Northern Europe and Asia into their global network. Reliance Globalcoms consultative global network review process and vendor independent flexibility also enabled considerable savings to be recognised via hardware upgrades in multiple geographies.

Alain Petit, Director (global) IT Infrastructure, Amer Sports, said, “One of the key competitive advantages Reliance Globalcom was able to offer was the simplification of management of a multi-carrier global network. We are now able to select the best carrier for our specific needs depending on the region and/or the country, in terms of both cost and bandwidth availability or any other parameters which are important to our local operations. All of these relationships can be managed centrally at a location of our choosing.

“The primary business driver for the network upgrade in Asia was to minimise the latency of Asian business access to our European data centres and a technical hub in Japan. By increasing the speed and reducing the cost of the connectivity to these key sites we have improved the overall efficiency of our Asia business.”

This approach was especially effective in emerging markets like China where utilisation of new local carriers resulted in significant cost reductions and management efficiencies. The Hybrid VNO approach means that dual carrier redundancy can be utilised to increase security and reliability while increasing overall network availability.

Amer Sports will directly benefit from lower costs, optimised latency and unmatched local market understanding and provisioning through the use of best-of-breed local providers. In addition, the highest level of service assurance will be delivered via Reliance Globalcoms’ global service level performance guarantees - regardless of the underlying carrier.

Reliance Globalcom also improved the latency of the always-on back-up circuit capability, allowing Amer Sports to off-load less critical internet browsing and email traffic from the primary circuit and offering higher service levels to critical traffic.

“Reliance Globalcom has been a trusted partner of ours for many years and have constantly proved their deep understanding of all of the global markets in which we operate,” explains Petit. “We receive reliable, responsive fault management and network consultation and genuine transparency in reporting, which matches our high standards of delivery of our customers requirements.”