Optical Solutions for Enterprise

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

When it's time to eat, restaurant customers expect high quality, great service and an overall good experience. And that's what Outback Steakhouse, Inc. also expects of its network. Steak is not the only item on Outback's menu - in addition to 857 Outback Steakhouses, the Outback restaurant system also operates 159 Carrabba's Italian Grills, 46 Bonefish Grills, 25 Fleming's Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bars, 18 Roy's Restaurants, five Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurants, and two Lee Roy Selmon's, in 50 U.S. states and 21 countries. The challenge for headquarters was to assure that each "customer" restaurant it operates had access to the data and network services required for delivering outstanding food and service, while the executive team received timely data for making decisions that maintain the company's aggressive growth targets.

One challenge with the company's previous information systems was reliability. The company and all of its restaurants needed to be able to access timely data, anytime, all the time, yet it commonly experienced lapses in application availability and poor application performance. One factor involved the actual building housing Outback's IT operations, which had problems with power. In addition, limited bandwidth slowed network performance for all of the company's restaurants, forcing them to wait for important data and causing reporting delays. Finally, because the headquarters are in Florida, operations were vulnerable to outages caused by lightning and hurricanes.

"We want our restaurants to focus on cooking great food and delivering excellent customer service," said Dusty Williams, Outback's chief information officer. "I don't want them to have to worry about anything related to information technology. We needed reliability and enough bandwidth to ensure that our growth plans would not impact any of our customers' ability to get the information they need. At headquarters, we wanted a solution that enabled us to focus on our own growth strategy, which is why we began evaluating out-tasking partners."

In the process of consolidating company operations into a headquarters location, Outback was simultaneously making a decision about out-tasking its datacenter to a secure site where power issues - and hurricanes - wouldn't be an issue. Outback chose Qwest and colocated its data-center operations in a Qwest Cyber Center. Qwest would provide full-time datacenter operations, as well as local access and transport area (LATA) and international transmission capabilities. However, Outback still had to connect its Tampa headquarters offices to the datacenter. After going through a request for proposal process and evaluating several options, Outback chose Time Warner Telecom. In addition to already having installed fiber in Outback's new office building, Time Warner Telecom could provide the managed services Outback needed to connect its far-flung restaurants, deliver high-availability services, and scale the network as Outback's needs changed over time. In addition, Time Warner Telecom had the advantage of being a Cisco® Powered Network member provider.

"We're growing dynamically," Williams says. "Five years from now, we don't want to have to worry about capacity issues. We chose an outstanding team who brought the best package into play for us. We know that in five years, these companies will still be here with us."

Outback's headquarters connects to the Qwest Cyber Center through Time Warner Telecom's native LAN (NLAN) managed service and a Metro Ethernet solution from Cisco Systems®, a flexible, service-driven network that delivers profitable and differentiated metro and broadband services. Time Warner Telecom brought redundant fiber into Outback's headquarters building and deployed a Cisco Catalyst® 6509 Switch and a Catalyst 3550 Switch, which connect to a Cisco 7609 Series router in Time Warner Telecom's central office via a SONET backbone and the 100MB NLAN service. Time Warner Telecom's metro SONET backbone assures high availability, offering 50 millisecond recovery times using redundant fiber paths and systems. This helps assure nearly 100-percent availability for Outback's business-critical operations data and enables the company to enjoy high availability in every restaurant location.

The Cisco 7609 Series router in Time Warner Telecom's central office delivers Outback operations data traffic to a Cisco ONS 15327 SONET MSPP, owned by Time Warner Telecom and colocated in the Qwest Cyber Center. Once the traffic enters the Cisco ONS 15327 ONS SONET MSPP in the Cyber Center, it must be converted to OC-3 (155 Mbps) to run over the high-availability Qwest infrastructure for long-distance transmission. It is then reconverted at the destination city back to Ethernet for delivery over Time Warner Telecom's metro network via the 100MB Ethernet NLAN service. The entire network is remotely monitored with the help of a Cisco IOS® Software application.

"This application was unique," explains Richard Santoro, vice president and general manager for Time Warner Telecom. "Thanks to the Cisco Metro Ethernet solution's architectural flexibility, we could support our environment and the Qwest environment to make the solution work for Outback."

Once the network was deployed, Outback transitioned its applications over a period of several weeks, running duplicate systems to provide a fallback in case of any problems.

Outback's new network is far more powerful and reliable, positioning the company for rapid growth while assuring high data availability. With plans to double the company's size in five years, Williams says he won't have to worry about the network being able to support the company's growth.

"Having the Metro Ethernet solution between the datacenter and our corporate location gives us a much more reliable solution," Williams says. "Execution was flawless. Time Warner Telecom and Cisco did a great job - we've had no downtime and no business interruption. Our customers never even knew we moved the datacenter."

Having the assurance of a Cisco Powered Network gives Williams a great deal of confidence. "We looked hard at the total solution package," he explained, "and we knew with Cisco and Time Warner Telecom that this was a partnership. We were looking to work with companies that would treat it as a partnership."

Williams feels that the network solution and managed service has been extremely cost-effective as well. In addition to saving money on local networking capabilities, Outback has gained the ability to do more with its network, such as add gigabit capacity as it is needed.

"We know the networks works," said Williams, "and when we're ready to make the next leap, we're comfortable we'll be able to do that. When we finished, it was fun for me to walk into meetings and ask people, `Did you know that the entire company's network was converted this weekend and we're now running in a different facility?' They would answer `no,' and that's exactly the answer I wanted to hear."

To find out more about Cisco routing solutions, go to: http://www.cisco.com/go/routing

To find out more about Cisco switching solutions, go to: http://www.cisco.com/go/switching

To find out more about Cisco optical solutions, go to: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/optical/index.html

To find out more about Cisco Metro Ethernet solutions, go to: http://www.cisco.com/go/metro

To find out more about Cisco Managed Metro Ethernet Services, go to: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns341/ns121/ns389/networking_solutions_solution.html

To find out more about Time Warner Telecom, go to: http://www.twtelecom.com

To find out more about Outback Steakhouse, go to: http://www.outbacksteakhouse.com

This customer story is based on information provided by Time Warner Telecom and Outback Steakhouse and describes how those particular organizations benefit from the deployment of Cisco products. Many factors may have contributed to the results and benefits described; Cisco does not guarantee comparable results elsewhere.

CISCO PROVIDES THIS PUBLICATION AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some jurisdictions do not allow disclaimer of express or implied warranties, therefore this disclaimer may not apply to you.