Datacraft India partners with leading telecom services provider to connect major retail pharmacy chain

SINGAPORE: Datacraft, the region’s leading independent IT services and solutions provider, has partnered with a leading Asian integrated telecommunications services provider based in India, to connect a major Indian pharmacy chain across the country. This prestigious project requires Datacraft to connect the pharmacy stores across key locations to a secure, stable and scalable network.

In order to address local competition directly, the pharmacy chain decided to relocate its retail outlets to new sites. These new outlets needed to be connected with the existing pharmacy network to ensure a secured and effective email and voice communication for the chain. As many of these stores are located within the rural part of India, network connectivity is key in ensuring effective collaboration and management.

This translates to the need for a highly available network that is scalable and secure. Hence, the pharmaceutical firm reached out to the telecommunications service provider to link up its dealer outlets across the country to a datacentre, hosted by the service provider.

“We were approached by the telecommunications company to customise network infrastructure for one of India’s largest pharmacy chains,” said Sunil Manglore, CEO for Datacraft India. “Our responsibility is to design a cost effective solution that is highly available, scalable and secure, while taking into account the size and complexity of the project as well as the distributed nature of the retail outlets.”

After an initial consultation period, Datacraft gained an in-depth understanding of the business and technical challenges of the pharmacy chain. Considering the scale and scope of the project, the team recommended a virtualised voice infrastructure to address the communications pain points while providing capacity for future expansion.

In order to enable secure access to the corporate network with data encryption, it was essential to put together a Digital Subscriber Line-based (DSL-based) CUG VPN (or Closed User Group Virtual Private Network) network that would terminate at the service provider’s datacentre.

This would be more cost effective than investing in an additional VPN concentrator. DSL-based connectivity also has other benefits like enabling a more efficient backbone that accommodates virtually any requests for remote access, intranet, extranet and internet access. It also took care of portability issues as relocated outlets can easily reconnect to the VPN via a Cisco router that provides DSL connectivity.

Besides having a strong and trusted relationship with the telecommunications company, Datacraft’s ability to deliver Uptime support services provided the competitive edge to be the chosen partner for this complex project.

“Through our Uptime services contract, our clients know that they can entrust Datacraft with all network and connectivity issues, so that they can focus on the strategic aspects of their business,” Manglore added.

“Our ability to deliver customised solutions to effectively address business and technical challenges unique to both the pharmaceutical company and telecommunications services provider was evident in the successful implementation of this project.”