Helping Ixom on its digital transformation journey

The challenge

Ixom is a manufacturer and trader of chemicals and ingredients. Based in Australia and New Zealand, it ships around 15,000 products worldwide from 45 sites in 16 countries. Connecting all of the 1,000 employees is essential to keep operations running smoothly. But the company’s old traditional network solution was inflexible, and making changes was costly.

For Ixom, digital enablement is key. The team’s ambition was to connect everyone and everything in the business so users could get the information they needed, whenever they needed it. Even if they were on the move. A cloud solution was the obvious choice, and SD-WAN seemed like the best fit.

But because the business is global, they needed the right solution that could connect them across the world. It was essential that they could make changes quickly if needed. And the team at Ixom wanted a more agile system that could help them react faster, without blowing the budget.

The solution

After considering multiple options from different suppliers, Ixom chose our SD-WAN solution to help them on the path to digital transformation. Our market-leading system gives the company more bandwidth, which it knew it would need as it continued to expand and work more online. We connected all 45 sites to the new network using hybrid MPLS and internet network across sites to create a truly global SD-WAN solution.

We worked with Ixom to design a tailored system that perfectly suited the business. Having previously worked with similar businesses in the same vertical, we used our experience to suggest the right combination of solutions. So the team got exactly what they needed.

We set Ixom up with Agile Connect, which is based on Nokia’s Nuage technology. As well as retiring the old traditional network solution, we also retired Ixom’s internet connections through Secure Internet Gateways (SIGs) during the move to SD-WAN. Agile Connect doesn’t just give the IT team more visibility of the network through a single portal. It adds an extra layer of security, proactive monitoring and reporting to the already super-secure SD-WAN. BT also set up a new innovative cloud networking VWAN solution for Ixom with Microsoft and Agile Connect, utilising the latest Azure networking solution.

Once the network was in place, the Ixom IT team modelled their application landscape to send the high priority traffic down the best performing route, and less important data over an internet service.

The result

“The results have been fantastic. It’s been revolutionary for our employees – they can now run what they need, when they need it,” says Ixom’s chief information officer, Rowan Start. Because their cloud applications perform better, teams can get the information they need faster. And customers can get real-time information on their orders. Plus, Ixom have been able to roll out new solutions to the business faster than ever before because the cloud-based network is easy to control from anywhere.

The extra network visibility that SD-WAN provides has also helped the IT team optimise its network traffic to prioritise what matters most. Our single network-management centre is available all day, every day, so if the team need help or want to make a change, we’re on hand to help. 

And with proactive monitoring and reporting built into the solution, we’ve been able to make sure the network stays protected and runs smoothly. It’s given Ixom the confidence to be more agile – and a powerful platform for innovation. It’s also boosted collaboration across the company, and cut costs by up to 25 percent.

“The results have been fantastic,” says Rowan. “It’s been revolutionary for our employees – they can now run what they need, when they need it. And we’ve been able to deliver solutions to the business faster than we’ve ever been able to do before.”