HP ProCurve Networking - Klantverhalen

	ProCurve Adaptive Network attracts tenants to new Saudi World Trade Center
	“One of our major concerns when choosing the networking vendor was security, and the ProCurve Adaptive Network with its intelligent switches and access points provides the best security you can get.” Ibrahim Al-Rubaian Chief executive officer World Trade Center Saudi Arabia

World Trade Center (WTC) Saudi is one of the newest members of the World Trade Centres Association (WTCA) which was initially established in 1970 by the pioneer World Trade Centres in Houston, New Orleans, New York and Tokyo. The main purpose of the WTCA is to facilitate international trade, and there are now more than 300 WTCs in 100 countries with 750,000 affiliate companies.

Headquartered in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, WTC Saudi is housed on four floors of a new, state-of-the-art office building in the prestigious King Fahd Road Olaya commercial district. Its mission statement is “to be a leading provider of all essential and vital trade services associated with global commerce under one roof in Saudi Arabia.” To live up to this mission, it is vitally important that the WTC has leading edge technology in place to enable it to deliver such a service without interruption.

Following its original proposal request, the WTC selected ProCurve Networking as its chosen provider for a secure, powerful and adaptive network infrastructure capable of supporting its future growth.

ProCurve attracts new tenants
Although the WTC was incorporated early in 2006, the office building was only ready for occupation in March 2007. As a result, negotiations are still ongoing with various international companies wishing to move from their existing premises in Riyadh into the WTC, where one of the main attractions to potential residents is the latest ProCurve Adaptive Network technology.

While the new offices were being constructed, the ProCurve equipment was integrated into the overall infrastructure using ProCurve 5400zl switches in the core of the network. An array of 3500yl series switches are located on each floor providing plentiful bandwidth, and integrated Power over Ethernet (PoE) on every port. ProCurve Manager Plus (PCM+) was also installed for central network management.

“One of our major concerns when choosing the networking vendor was security, and the ProCurve Adaptive Network with its intelligent switches and access points provides the best security you can get,” says WTC Saudi’s chief executive officer Ibrahim Al-Rubaian. “We have businessmen from all over the world using our temporary office space and it is important for them to use a secure connection and to be able to plug-and-go with their laptops and other devices, and ProCurve is very user friendly in that respect.”

Ultimate access control
“Of course there also needs to be different levels of access, controlled via individual IDs at the access points, and ProCurve gives us the ultimate in access control,” adds Al-Rubaian. “The network is adaptive to applications and users, personalising user experience once ID and device have been established.”

Choosing ProCurve has simplified life greatly for WTC Saudi with respect to their choice of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution. Often the selection of VoIP vendor cannot be decoupled from the networking vendor, but with ProCurve and its approach to supporting open standards, the choice of convergence vendor is totally open, ensuring flexibility for future growth.

“It is important for WTC Saudi to be able to guarantee its customers a very high level of reliability and quality in the telephony service, and this is made possible because the ProCurve Adaptive Network is able to assign the necessary quality of service to avoid dropped calls. At the end of the day we have selected a Cisco VoIP solution which performs totally to our expectations on our non-Cisco network!” says Al-Rubaian.

ProCurve Adaptive Network convinces Boeing
The adaptability of ProCurve has also been a selling point for WTC as it looks for prestigious long-term tenants. “One of our major tenants is going to be Boeing,” explains Al-Rubaian. “They came along and looked at the ProCurve network to make sure they could put all of their IT onto the network while maintaining their secure environment. They were very satisfied with what they found and are now going to move from their existing premises. The new ProCurve Adaptive Network is definitely a selling point for us.”

When WTC Saudi decided to take on the multinational Regus Group to manage its offices, the Regus executives tried to insist on a Cisco network, saying Regus uses Cisco networking in its operations around the world. “We told them it didn’t matter if they were used to Cisco, they had better learn more about ProCurve,” says Al-Rubaian. “I told them if they could show me Cisco was better we would go with Cisco, but after they had seen the ProCurve solution, and its impressive overall total cost of ownership, they had to agree with us.”

A better deal from ProCurve
Al-Rubaian is now so enthusiastic about ProCurve he is urging other Saudi organisations to adopt the solution. “In Saudi Arabia, Cisco has dominated the networking market, but now people are starting to realise that not only do they get a better deal from ProCurve when it comes to deploying advanced networking technology, but that they can also do it without sacrificing quality or service, and within their budget,” he says.

WTC Saudi now plans to open new offices on both the east and west coasts of the Kingdom as well as its own exhibition centre in Riyadh. “We will duplicate the ProCurve network in all of our new premises, including the future-proofing aspect which gives us the ability to upgrade from the current 1Gb switch to 10Gb when we need to,” concludes Al-Rubaian.