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G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottling Inc. Eliminates Network Bottlenecks with HP Converged Infrastructure

Monday 07. February 2011 - HP and Elite channel partner SARCOM deploy simple, reliable and flexible network to meet G&J's business needs

HP today announced that G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottling Inc. (G&J), a PepsiCo Inc. franchise bottler, has selected HP Networking solutions to improve business agility while lowering costs.
To achieve this, G&J turned to HP for standards-based technology that reduces the complexity of their network environment and provides a more scalable architecture for increased flexibility. HP Networking solutions are part of HP’s Converged Infrastructure portfolio, which integrates data center technologies into pools of interoperable resources.
By implementing HP Networking solutions at the core and edge of its network, G&J has been able to speed up and secure vital business processes, including order processing, billing and logistics for distribution to thousands of retail customers. As a result, G&J can respond to changing market conditions, such as adding new distributors faster and easier than ever before, all while reducing total cost of ownership by 35 percent.
G&J distributes PepsiCo and Dr. Pepper products in Ohio and Kentucky through seven franchise locations. The company’s network interconnects 12 sites – corporate headquarters, 10 warehouses and a separate disaster recovery site.
Faced with an ineffective, aging network infrastructure, G&J reached out to SARCOM Inc. – an HP Elite channel partner and provider of technology products, services and solutions – to assess its networking requirements. G&J considered both HP and Cisco solutions designed by SARCOM. Reliability, simplicity, ease of use, security, scalability and total cost of ownership were G&J’s primary criteria for selecting an HP Networking solution.
“Over the years, our networking architecture has evolved to become complex and difficult to manage. As such, we needed a solution that could bring us back to a simple, agile infrastructure that was closer to what we started with,” said Chris Witzgall, vice president, Information Services, G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottling Inc. “SARCOM understood our business needs, worked with us to consider our various options and ultimately proposed an HP solution that has enabled us to simplify our network infrastructure, improve business agility, streamline management and reduce ongoing costs.”
G&J is integrating products from across the entire line of HP ProCurve 3500 Series and HP ProCurve 8212zl switches at the edge and core of its network. SARCOM’s full-time, on-site engineer configured the new HP switches to achieve 20 to 30 percent performance improvements over the previous switches. SARCOM’s solution also reduced G&J’s total cost of ownership due in part to HP Networking’s lifetime warranty on access switches.
“As their business demands escalate, our customers are looking to upgrade and often replace their network infrastructures,” said Jim Garrity, president, SARCOM. “By leveraging existing networking knowledge and experience, our engineers could rapidly deploy HP technology with no additional training and configure the HP switches to offer faster performance than the devices previously used. The lifetime warranties offered by HP, combined with their enterprise-level expertise and the sophistication of their technology, are key factors in developing network and wireless solutions for our clients nationwide.”
G&J’s network is now completely composed of HP technology. Beginning this month, SARCOM’s on-site engineer will begin working directly with G&J’s IT team to deploy the HP Networking wireless solution throughout G&J’s 12 locations.