Seminis is also looking at IP videoconferencing over its WAN. But even with QoS, video will likely require WAN bandwidth upgrades, Ackerman observes.
"You have to tie in bandwidth concerns with video, whether we have enough at any given point," he says. "128K for video is going to be an issue if you have data traversing the pipe as well."
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These days, most IT departments must endure a gut-wrenching budget-approval process even for the simplest of upgrades. But Seminis' proposal for WAN compression and QoS (quality of service) sailed through its approval cycle, in part because the company had a budget for its WAN infrastructure. Seminis won't talk specifics on its budget numbers, according to Erik Ackerman, network engineer at Seminis, but there was plenty of headroom for the initial $100,000 purchase of Peribit SR-50 and SR-20 Sequence Reducer WAN optimization devices last year.
"We were in a good position," Ackerman says. "And the company is very pro-IT: If a project makes sense, they will do it." All the IT team had to do was sell it to the IT director, and the buy was a sure thing.
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