Staying Connected

Implemented a Solution that Enabled the Flow of Information Internally Between Employees and Externally with its Many Business Partners.

Executive Summary

Background
The Irvine Company is the developer of a 60,000-acre "master-planned" community in the Orange Country area of California that includes homes, commercial and industrial parks, retail centers, and recreational facilities such as golf courses and marinas.

Challenge
The company sought a solution that could ease the distribution of information among employees at various locations as well as with business partners, including property management companies, builders, consultants, architects, and lawyers.

Solution
Cisco provided a complete end-to-end network solution consisting of switches, routers, and access servers that streamlines information distribution and communication throughout the organization.

Results
The Irvine Company now receives more timely leasing information from management companies for better asset management and is able to distribute large project files within its organization quickly and easily.

Background

The Irvine Company, headquartered in Newport Beach, California, is one of the oldest and largest U.S. master-plan developers, a firm that literally conceives communities. With the motto, "We create a highly desirable place to live, shop, work, learn, and play," the company has been developing a 60,000-acre track of land that it owns in Orange County. This master-planned community includes homes, commercial and industrial parks, retail centers, and recreational facilities such as golf courses and marinas.

The Challenge

Real estate development and management generates a tremendous volume of information that must be efficiently exchanged with property management companies, builders, consultants, architects, and lawyers. Project proposals typically include very large financial and legal documents that are distributed among partners. Leasing information and vacancy data must be readily accessible. The Irvine Company is dependent on the flow of information--getting it to internal and external people that need to share that information.

The company was outgrowing its local area network (LAN), a network that Tim McClain, the manager of voice and data communications for the Irvine Company says was adequate for a firm with 100 employees. But the company had more than 200 employees, was in a growth stage, and needed to connect additional individuals at other companies that it worked closely with on a day-to-day basis. "We needed to eliminate congestion on the LAN and the wide area network (WAN)," says McClain. "We also needed a stable WAN solution, a secure Internet access to facilitate communication with external partners, and we needed a one-vendor solution for monitoring the network."

The Solution

The answer was a high-capacity, highly scalable network based on Cisco switches, hubs, and routers, providing reliable connectivity to employees and business partners. The Irvine Company installed a Cisco 5500 backbone switch on the fourth floor of its nine-story headquarters building. Each floor is served by one or more Cisco 1900 10-Mb switches and Cisco 318 100-Mb hubs connected through a 100-Mb link back to the Cisco 5500.

File and application servers configured as full duplex with Fast Ethernet are located in an adjacent one-story building and are connected to the Cisco 5500 via 100-Mb fiber. Also connected to the Cisco 5500 are a number of Cisco 2501 Frame Relay routers that serve remote locations, including a property management firm and a builder. To enable communication with other locations and business partners, McClain installed Cisco's PIX? Firewall for Internet access. A firewall protects confidential internal information while allowing access to those who need it.

The Results

The Cisco network streamlines access to information. A Frame Relay connection with one of the Irvine Company's property management firms, for example, provides daily updates on office occupancies. Using an accounting application known as MRI, information on lease changes and rent payments is automatically downloaded each night, resulting in more timely receipt of data. "When a potential client requires a certain number of square feet in a specific area, we don't have to tell them that we'll call them back tomorrow, which could mean losing that prospect to another leasing firm. We have that data at our fingertips right now," says McClain.

Connectivity via Frame Relay offers another advantage. Partners, such as the property management firm, can share applications with the Irvine Company, becoming peers off existing Irvine Company servers. Eliminated is the cost of software, servers, and administration for the partner.

The network also streamlines communication. While internal e-mail has been available for several years, Internet connectivity enables Irvine Company employees to communicate with their partners more effectively, 24 hours a day. "The impact has been enormous," says McClain. "It's no longer a question of, `How can we get the information'. Instead, it's a matter of, `How do we best utilize that information'. Getting information faster helps us to better serve our customers."

In addition, the Cisco network gives the Irvine Company almost unlimited scalability and flexibility to grow. "Now we can confidently add applications and resources without impacting our network performance," says McClain, who recently began adding two of the company's golf courses and a hotel to the network. Guests at the hotel will be able to make reservations at either of the golf courses and have the fees charged to their room. Also under consideration is the installation of live video feeds at various golf courses and shopping centers enabling anyone to view them via the World Wide Web.

The Irvine Company is one of the most successful real estate developers in the country. Implementation of a Cisco network has helped the firm to enhance its success by improving internal and external communication. As McClain describes it, "We've eliminated the barriers in obtaining information by positioning our network as an efficient conduit between ourselves and our business partners."