A new managed services deployment involving networking and SIP trunking and VoIP has been announced by EarthLink. The company is managing voice and data services for textiles retailer Anna’s Linens in more than 300 stores, with support for 3,200 employees.
The deal was brokered through EarthLink partner Grauman Communications, and has the retailer migrating to an EarthLink MPLS network and SIP trunking to accommodate their rapid growth rate. Anna’s Linens decided on the migration to a centralized IT and networking model that would enable them to run more applications more efficiently, and was essential to support their growth.
"Prior to working with EarthLink, Anna's was pushing the limits of its network and found it difficult to manage systems at each store, troubleshoot or make agile global changes," said Greg Griffiths, vice president of retail solutions at EarthLink. He added that by integrating voice and data services on a managed network, the company can efficiently handle changes and benefit from a single platform and simplified management.
Each store gets the bandwidth it needs through the new arrangement, including ADSL and T1 to accommodate traffic needs. EarthLink is using Class of Service to prioritize network traffic and ensure voice as well as point-of-sale traffic receives the highest priority. All voice traffic from multiple locations utilizes a central network, eliminating the needed for dedicated voice connections at each retail location. Since analog phone lines have been replaced with VoIP, Anna’s Linens is benefiting from increased bandwidth as well as simplified management of voice and data.
EarthLink and Grauman have not disclosed which equipment they are using in the new installation, however, EarthLink was certified for interoperability with Toshiba’s IPedge business telephone systems in March for its Complete Voice SIP Trunking services. The offering provides an enhanced SIP trunking solution with features like call processing, voicemail, unified messaging and video conferencing and web collaboration. EarthLink SIP Trunking also works with customers existing Cisco, Avaya, NEC and Mitel equipment.
