Site MapThe New Zealand Merino Company
Technology Delivers New Zealand Merino story to the world.
The New Zealand Merino Company (NZM) is an award winning New Zealand success story. Through innovation and their brand story they have transformed one of New Zealand’s most exclusive natural fibres into a premium branded product sought after by discerning global clients.
NZM acts to increase demand for New Zealand Merino globally by working with brand and supply chain partners to differentiate their product and champion the unique attributes of the fibre, and with growers to ensure long term sustainable prices. NZM also undertakes significant research & development to enhance all aspects of the merino offering from on-farm practices to garment production.
This global and diverse reach of NZM has required the extensive use of technology to help bring the NZM story to life for customers and partners, both domestically and overseas. The innovative use of technology provides NZM with a true differentiator in the global merino market. Since 2002, Datasouth has been working with NZM to ensure that their technology enables them to get on with business, delivering the right information at the right time irrespective of their geographical location.
Using technology as a business enabler
New Zealand Merino operates in an environment that is extremely dynamic, fluid and geographically diverse. In any single day, NZM staff may be working with growers at the farm gate, engaging with buyers around the world, interacting with supply chain partners, and developing the New Zealand Merino brands with iconic European fashion houses. This diversity demands NZM focus on their business, and that the technology they use be a true enabler.
This requirement has been achieved by deploying technologies that allow NZM and their partners to securely collaborate and share information across multiple company corporate networks, increasing productivity and enhancing the bottom line.
“The ability to securely share information assets with our logistic and brand partners has transformed they way we do business, resulting in improved service levels to our stakeholders including growers, buyers, and supply chain partners” – Peter Floris, NZM Chief Financial Officer.
Keeping it simple and secure
With the requirement to deliver information assets to both staff and partners, a high level of complexity had been introduced in the management of user profiles and the security policies applied. This complexity has been removed by the implementation of an identity and access management solution, providing centralised management and automation of user provisioning.
The geographical spread of NZM’s work requires a simple and secure method for the delivery of systems and information to remote users. This has been achieved by utilising secure SSL virtual private networks (VPN) and web based menu interfaces, providing users with a single click authentication to the corporate network. The solution designed with simplicity in mind for system maintenance and configuration utilises automated deployment which requires no end user intervention.
Integrity of network resources is maintained by system devices checking that they comply with corporate antivirus signature and system patch levels before connecting to the network. In the event that a device does not comply, an automated process deploys the required updates, allowing the device to become compliant, and thus connect to the network.
“Maintaining the integrity of our information assets is critical to the NZM business, and we were challenged how this would be maintained when we started sharing these assets with our partners and remotes users. Datasouth took the time to understand these needs and designed a solution that provides us with peace of mind that our information assets are correctly secured and not vulnerable to unauthorised access.” – Peter Floris.
A standard operating environment (SOE) is deployed to all NZM desktop devices providing a streamlined process for the centralised deployment and management of the operating environment to the desktop. Application deployment and maintenance is also managed centrally removing the need for user intervention.
Maintaining Business Continuity
While New Zealand sleeps, NZM staff continue to work with partners and customers around the globe delivering the New Zealand Merino story. This demands high availability of system resources and information so that NZM maintain a competitive edge in the global merino markets.
The solution to these demands has been met by centralised monitoring and maintenance tools that provide real-time diagnostics of the networks health. In the situation of an event that may impact the networks performance, an automated resolution is attempted. Should this not be successful, an alert is sent to the Datasouth Service Desk so that the event may be escalated to an appropriate technical resource for resolution.
A data protection and disaster recovery solution completes the high availability design of the network, ensuring that the information assets of NZM are fully protected from data loss or corruption. This is provided by automated data backups and the real-time replication of key data to a hosted disaster recovery site. In the event that the production network is unavailable, NZM and its logistics partners have the ability to seamlessly access critical information assets from the disaster recovery site.
“As we work in a global market, availability of our network resources and information assets 24/7 is critical to our business operations. We recognised that we needed to mitigate the risk associated with equipment failures, and reduce the impact of environmental events that may impede the performance and delivery of these resources. The solution developed by Datasouth has met all of these requirements at an appropriate investment level. The end result is that we have a proactively maintained system with high availability, reliability and integrity contributing to an improved bottom line.” – Peter Floris.
