Solvay cuts telecoms costs 30 per cent with Ipanema Technologies and BT

System deployed across 30,000 staff

Global chemical company Solvay has used BT Connect Optimization, a BT managed service based on Ipanema Technologies, to cut telecommunications costs by 30 per cent.

The Belgium headquartered firm, which operates in 55 countries, saw its employee numbers double from 15,000 to 30,000 in 2011 following the acquisition of Rhodia. As a result, the IT department was tasked with improving networks and services and reducing costs while combining Solvay and Rhodia's networks

By deploying BT and Ipanema Technologies, the firm was able to reduce telecommunication costs by moving applications including Gmail, Google apps and SalesForce.com into the cloud.

Solvay examined other types of solution including WAN Optimization and Classes of Service, but selected BT Connect Optimization as it offered most control over application performance.

"Ultimately, we opted for BT Connect Optimization based on Ipanema Technologies because it could give us full control of our application performance over the global network, protecting applications according to their business criticality and dynamically using all resources of the hybrid network to maximise business continuity," said Vincent Best, global WAN manager at Solvay.

"Thanks to BT Connect Optimization, we can now easily adapt to changes in network traffic that might occur due to our IT transformations. From 2011 to 2013, our comparable telecom costs have been reduced by 30 per cent."

Keith Langridge, vice president, network services at BT Global Services, added the company was pleased to be offering its services to Solvay.

"We're pleased to have been able to help Solvay reduce costs while improving productivity. New services that can help improve efficiency and speed up decision making, such as unified communications and video, are bandwidth-hungry and so need a dynamic solution to secure optimal performance," he said.

"The high level of control delivered by Ipanema Technologies is much appreciated by forward-thinking, cost-conscious IT departments and we're proud to be able to offer the technology as part of our managed service."

Computing will host an IT Leaders Forum on ‘Managing the hybrid cloud – public, private, on premise and off premise.' on 18 March. The event is free to attend for senior IT professionals from end-user organisations and can be registered for from here.