Queensland capital, Brisbane
Brisbane-based integrator RIoT Solutions has secured a major project win to design and supply product for hospitality provider, ALH Group, claiming it as one of the largest Cisco Meraki deals in the country.
ALH Group’s portfolio involves more than 330 pubs, clubs and hotels, with the project involving a national, site-wide refresh using SD-WAN and security technologies based on Cisco Meraki to help improve performance, visibility and compliance while aiming to reduce network costs across the company.
RIoT managing director and founder, Rob Merkwitza, said ALH, a traditional Cisco customer, chose to adopt the full stack of the Meraki solution, as a standard platform across all their venues and pubs.
“The approach taken was not just about a simple lifecycle refresh, but was significantly focused on the adoption of SD-WAN services,” he said.
According to Merkwitza, adopting SD-WAN allows ALH to "significantly reduce" carriage costs by migrating away from traditional MPLS services, achieved through using multiple standard internet connections from different providers including NBN, ADSL, 4G and so on, which in turn provides a highly resilient architecture.
“This configuration also provides ALH the ability to perform local internet breakout from the venues rather than having to transit the central data centres,' Merkwitza said.
"Leveraging the Meraki advanced security features provides security at the edge rather than having to invest in significant central infrastructure."
The simplified licensing model and cloud architecture reduced costs in managing and maintaining the network, Merkwitza said.
Other Cisco security services were also included in the deal such as Cisco Cloudlock, Umbrella, AMP and Threat Grid.
“The ALH Group project has been a significant engagement that allowed us to become intimate with their business,” Merkwitza said.
"They were able to capitalise on our expertise and experience to end up with a solution that will see a multitude of advantages for them across the network going forward.
"We have spent a lot of time and effort focussing on the Meraki platform over the past two years and it has been extremely satisfying seeing this and other significant deals getting across the line for us this past year."
The ALH project will also see RIoT expand beyond its Queensland market focus, into Victoria, with other states also on the horizon, Merkwitza said.
Since its establishment two and a half years ago, RIoT has grown to 25 employees, signing more than 55 customers including state government departments, regional councils, retail, universities, transportation, utilities and manufacturing organisations.
"The 17/18 financial year for us was nothing short of impressive," Merkwitza added. "We gave ourselves a challenge to double our revenues whilst improving profitability.
"It’s fair to say we have done that and seen a great mix of enterprise IT and operational technology (OT) projects that include both network security design and cyber security services.
"In the last 12 months we have seen the OT/IT market start to mature and feel we are ready and well placed to make the best of these opportunities. Our focus this year will be around managed services and growing our architecture, cyber security and infrastructure areas."
For the new financial year, RIoT has made significant investments in its business through appointing to practice management positions Jon Robertson for managed services, Kris Duffy for infrastructure services, and Mark Cross for cyber security services.
Meanwhile, Michael van Rooyen was also hired as the CTO and Petr Chrapavy has been appointed as the chief security officer.
“It’s clear that for us to scale we need to create a structure that focuses on our key areas of growth, however we have done this in a way that allow us to stay agile and encourage our experts to cross-skill in both network security and cyber security domains,” he said.
"We have come up with a model that provides our key resources with the opportunity to lead however still stay in touch with technology, projects and most importantly our customers."
Last year, the internet of things (IoT) solutions integrator also hired Scott Reid, as its new director of smart and connected networks, in a move aimed at boosting the company’s strategic partnerships.
