Al Madina Press has two major centres in Jeddah, four regional offices and 18 branches in Saudi Arabia as well as offices in Cairo and Dubai.

"When you are in our market, good communication is the number one priority," said Hisham Zahid, deputy managing director of Al Madina. "We were working with old technology which cost us a lot of money to maintain and did not work well. We missed a lot of chances for communicating with our reporters and getting the news in."

To maintain its competitive edge, Al Madina decided to start again from scratch. It embarked on an ambitious project to build a totally new IT infrastructure for the whole company. Part of this was a new converged voice and data communication (VoIP) system with Mitel telephony. To support this, Al Madina wanted a networking solution that was easy to manage and adapt to its needs, offered increased productivity and security and one that could be developed to meet any new business challenges. ProCurve Networking by HP was the solution that was chosen in preference to Cisco.

"The major reason that we went for ProCurve is that it offered the best solution for us because it has a high configuration, the best price/performance ratio and works excellently with our applications in VoIP," added Zahid. "We wanted an infrastructure that could provide us this, with the 10Gb solution we needed. ProCurve Networking supported that better than any other supplier."

The Al Madina network will eventually serve 400 nodes across Al Madina's offices and feature a 10Gb backbone with 1Gb lines to the desktops. It includes a highly available mesh of ProCurve 6410 aggregation switches in the core of the network and a set of ProCurve 3400cl series switches at the edge for client-side connectivity. ProCurve flexibility enables Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) to improve productivity and manageability and the new infrastructure includes some 40 ProCurve 420 Wireless Access Points.

"The security, reliability and high availability offered by ProCurve were important factors because we work nearly 24 hours a day and cannot accept any downtime," added Zahid. "We also knew that we would get a level of service from ProCurve that we would not get from other vendors. This communication system puts Al Madina on the leading edge of technology ahead of our competitors."

• Saudi Arabia's leading newspaper and magazine publisher and commercial printer, Al Madina Press, is at the forefront of communications but it found that its own communications systems had not kept pace with growth.
• Old technology meant the communication system was costly to maintain and inefficient, and this was detrimental to the news gathering process.
• To maintain an edge in its highly competitive market, Al Madina needed a new solution that would improve contact between its many Saudi offices and others in Cairo and Dubai.

• As part of a total overhaul of the company's IT, Al Madina instituted a new, company-wide converged voice and data solution with Mitel telephony and ProCurve Networking by HP.
• The secure network has a 10Gb backbone and 1Gb deskside links with Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) to improve productivity and management. Distribution switches are ProCurve 6410 switches and client-side switches are ProCurve 3400cl series switches.
• Some 40 ProCurve 420 Wireless Access Points have also been deployed throughout all Al Madina's buildings.

Simplicity
The versatility of the ProCurve Networking solution enables it to be readily adapted for maximum productivity and ease of management.

Agility
In practical terms, every single reporter and every single office can now gain direct PC access to major services of the company, including TV, and can communicate, no matter where they are.

Value
ProCurve offered excellent price/performance ratio and its ongoing value to the company is that it is now at the forefront of communications technology, with an advantage over its competitors.

• ProCurve had the most impressive configuration and was the only solution that could give Al Madina the effective 10Gb networking it required.
• It worked excellently with Al Madina's applications and VoIP.
• The customer believed that ProCurve would provide the best service.

When you are ready to explore the benefits a ProCurve Networking solution can offer you, call HP at 1-800-975-7682.

To learn more about ProCurve Networking's Adaptive EDGE Architecture™ solutions, visit our home page.

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