German tour operator moves business-critical IT to new fault-tolerant data center.

To increase the availability and scalability of company IT systems, alltours moved its business-critical IT equipment into a new data center, requiring a green-field build-out of network infrastructure. alltours’ entire business is dependent on the accessibility of its systems by its customers, so the availability and reliability of the solution was paramount. Its central databases, booking systems, and website rely on the network infrastructure. Its call center, which is run over VoIP, is also dependent on the new data center, as all of its gateways are located in the data center.

alltours had deployed Juniper Networks firewalls previously, and on the recommendation of Juniper’s local partner Concentrade, it had gone on to deploy them throughout its entire network. Concentrade also suggested alltours look at Juniper’s switching solution for its new data center infrastructure. alltour then began a thorough evaluation of Juniper’s data center switching capabilities. Fault tolerance and high availability were the most important criteria. It was also essential that all the architectural components of the network would work well together, and would be easy to maintain and operate with zero downtime, even during software upgrades.

All alltours critical customer applications now use the new network, from the central travel booking process to its VoIP call-centre. The migration was challenging, as alltours had to transition to its new data center in a single night. Concentrade ensured that the process went smoothly, and by the morning, everything was working seamlessly.

“Things change fast in our market,” Sven Joost says. “A new program or idea can arrive in the market very quickly and we have to be able to react and keep pace—so we need an infrastructure that can be just as flexible—coping with new systems, applications, or rapidly adding capacity. We chose the right partner and the right technology. If we had to go through the process again, we would do exactly the same thing.”