Cisco 2800 Series Integrated Services Routers

BAT Italia's new headquarters building acts as a hub for the company's operations. Number two in Italy-thanks to the acquisition of the country's state tobacco company, ETI (Ente Tabacchi Italiani S.p.A), by BAT Italia in 2003-Rome-based BAT Italia has been growing with the success of its international brands.

However, BAT Italia has inherited an aging communications infrastructure. Relatively few sites in the ETI estate were connected to its headquarters network.

ETI's factories relied on 1,700 routers to send production data to the company's headquarters over individual ISDN lines. "The quality of all these connections was poor, and they weren't as stable and secure as we'd have liked," says Duccio Rosselli, BAT Italia's IT Delivery Technology Architect. Responsible for technology innovation and application strategies, Rosselli sets out planning and implementation blueprints for the company to follow as it adopts new strategies to support the business.

Each BAT employee must have a PC connected to the network, with an email client, and be able to access the Group's SAP environment, various accounting applications and other offices and production units via the Group's worldwide MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) network.

"So it is important for us to connect our factories to the Rome headquarters in a more stable, and secure way," says Duccio Rosselli. "We need to increase security on the links, to have the flexibility to accommodate new applications and features on the network, as well as have solutions which are scalable and easily managed-this is very important."

As British American Tobacco worldwide's technology partner-advising on security, IP telephony, and networking-BAT Italia asked Cisco to install its latest backbone network and other state-of-the-art infrastructure technologies throughout BAT's Rome headquarters building.

After various security cost and benefit analyses, comparing them with other solutions, BAT Italia decided to implement Cisco Integrated Services Routers, because of the way a comprehensive set of advanced security and management functions-such as hardware encryption acceleration, IPSec VPN, firewall protection, inline intrusion prevention, Network Admission Control and URL filtering-are embedded in the one unit.

The company has also decided to replace the former ETI network's individual point-to-point security solutions with Cisco ISR technology. Cisco 2851 and 3845 Integrated Services Routers are specifically designed for mid-market companies that have a need to converge voice, vídeo and data, or expand a Cisco CallManager environment to a branch office without a conventional PBX (Private Branch eXchange).

Italian telecoms service provider Fastweb is installing and managing BAT Italia's fixed Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and High bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line (HSDL) connections using Cisco 2851 Integrated Services Routers for client-side Internet access to BAT's corporate MPLS network. Connections between BAT Italia's factories (and other remote sites) and the BAT network will use Cisco 3845 Integrated Services Routers.

IP telephony is provided by Cisco CallManager 4.1, while another server delivers Cisco Unity unified messaging. BAT is planning to implement wireless networking in the near future, but an evaluation of its security implications and any impact on performance will be carried out first. Cisco ISRs support wireless LAN connectivity; the Cisco 2851 sports a built-in access point.

Cisco Integrated Services Routers offer a right-sized solution for mid-market companies that is simple to deploy, easy to manage and provides a high level of built-in protection, features that sit at the top of BAT Italia's wish list for router functionality. "I have been particularly struck by the Cisco Integrated Services Routers' ease of management, level of security provision, integrated feature set, and therefore their cost effectiveness to the business," says Duccio Rosselli.

The company is in the step-by-step process of reviewing all the infrastructure technologies in its factories, some of which are quite old. Each factory is being connected to the new BAT network one by one. The ISRs have played a vital role in BAT Italia's planning, especially for security and IP telephony. "After the security improvements on the telecoms and systems standardisation in the factories, in the medium term we will evaluate, accordingly with global BAT strategy, the implementation of the voice and data convergence in the factories. So it is very important for us to lay the foundations now, with routers that can manage, for example, IP telephony packets reliably," says Duccio Rosselli.

Self-defending networks integrate and connect network and security technologies, making them even more powerful. The ISRs' use of VPN encryption on the network and WAN has helped BAT maintain a high throughput of data traffic and security protection without any loss of performance. Because the ISR architecture delivers wire-speed performance, there is no compromise when security and additional services are turned on-a feature that helps BAT apply comprehensive security services throughout its network.

Converting the factories from ISDN to DSL and a Cisco ISR solution, rather than a combination of routers and firewall technologies from multiple vendors, will cut the company's connection costs in half straightaway. The process has also given BAT the opportunity to make further Returns On Investment (ROI) by installing up-to-date multifunctional telecoms technology. This will reduce the number of network devices it has to maintain. Running the various network services from just the one box also simplifies management.

"The mission of IT delivery is to use technology to support the business in the best way possible. Using new technologies can provide huge benefits for the business, by improving performance and quality of service," says Duccio Rosselli. "Our experience with Cisco environments in Italy has been very good. We place great trust in Cisco equipment and the Integrated Services Routers have increased our level of network security, thanks to embedded encryption. These systems have also helped reduce operating costs and technical complexity because functionality is now integrated into the one device which makes overall network management easier."

BAT Italia's Cisco IP network in its Rome headquarters is an end-to-end infrastructure solution that delivers Gigabit Ethernet speeds and services to the desktop. IP telephony is provided by Cisco CallManager 4.1, while another server delivers Cisco Unity unified messaging. CiscoWorks SNMS manages various Cisco network devices.

Cisco ISRs manage security at vital points in BAT Italia's IP network, and new WAN connections. Fixed ADSL and HSDL connections use Cisco 2851 Integrated Services Routers in BAT's Rome headquarters to manage client-side Internet access to BAT's corporate MPLS network. Cisco 3845 Integrated Services Routers sit in BAT Italia's factories and communicate with the BAT network in Rome.

Rome staff use a mix of Microsoft Windows and Lotus Domino desktop environments. They also have access to SAP (managed from Hamburg with other centralised Internet services), various accounting applications (at BAT's London headquarters), and BAT offices worldwide via the Group's corporate MPLS network.