A new network for the modern office and warehouse environment: a great value for money

The growth of the Dino’s chain of mid-sized supermarkets is a true phenomenon, both on the domestic and European level. Since its debut on the Warsaw Stock Exchange less than 6 years ago, the company has seen an impressive growth trajectory, as evidenced by the large-scale expansion of its stores. By the end of 2022, the network numbered 2,156 stores. Only last year, the company opened 344 new stores.

One of the prerequisites for such a dynamic growth is a proficient logistic infrastructure that enables daily supply of fresh products. However, the company’s first distribution center, built in 2002 in Krotoszyn in the western Poland, began to experience certain difficulties due to the old networking infrastructure slowly becoming obsolete. Given the rapid increase of new spaces, end-devices and employees, as well as the ambitious plans for future expansion, the company’s IT team started looking for a more efficient, scalable, and secure network solution that would streamline and improve processes in the central office and warehouse complex in Krotoszyn, while making it easier to control the rapidly growing environment.

“The dynamic business growth over the years required our engineers to adapt quickly. Unfortunately, the previous wired and wireless infrastructure, although built on the equipment from leading vendors, has become obsolete, therefore the IT team could no longer keep up with business demands. We needed a new, complete solution based on best practices that would increase the bandwidth capacity, scalability, automation and security of the LAN network spanning our offices and logistics center in Krotoszyn”, says Dariusz Włodarczyk, the Head of IT Infrastructure at Dino Polska S.A.

Vernity, one of the participants in the tender, came up with a unified solution based solely on the Extreme Networks products for managing, monitoring, and deploying wired and wireless networks, with the intention of making it easier for the company’s networking team to maintain high performance, security and reliability across the entire infrastructure. The project that would involve the replacement of over 100 switches and a couple of hundred of access points was focused on combining the capabilities of Extreme Fabric connect, the industry-leading Shortest Path Bridging / IEEE 802.1aq, with the ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine controller.

“None of the IT engineers at Dino Polska had any previous experience with Extreme Networks products so we had to convince the client to our vision, especially that we were the only tenderer to offer a fabric-based solution”, says Bartłomiej Dudka, Customer Care and Sales Team Leader at Vernity. “A few workshops and a demo lab allowed us to shed light on all the benefits of our proposition, and the proposed design and architecture turned out to be the best match for the client’s needs”.

“What convinced us particularly was the technology behind the proposition. The SPB protocol itself, which Extreme Fabric connect is based upon, takes our information security to a whole new level. Additionally, we have the Fabric Attach feature that leverages the flexibility and extensibility of Fabric Connect to quickly and automatically add switches and access points to the network”, Dariusz Włodarczyk admits. “What’s more, there’s the central management which in our opinion is quite neatly engineered and as the practice shows, works very well. None of the other options offered so much value”.

The benefits of deploying the new LAN solution covering the offices and warehouses of the company’s central location in Krotoszyn were visible right from the start. Despite the scale and the delicate nature of the project (a full rip-and-replace of the backbone network and the wireless infrastructure), the compatibility and possible integration with third party equipment during the transition period allowed for a smooth migration toward Extreme.

The combination of Extreme Fabric Connect technology and the management solution allowed to simplify provisioning, change propagations and configurations, making it easier to add several dozens of new network devices and enabling a frictionless modernization of the subsequent warehouses. The flexibility and scalability of the network was key, not only from the perspective of growth of the corporate headquarters in Krotoszyn, but also adding new distribution centers spread across the whole country.

“Considering the fact that our environment is changing rapidly, we can comfortably say that the reduced network complexity and the Extreme management panel helped us save money in our IT budget”, Dariusz Włodarczyk explains. “With our new Extreme solution in place we are able to manage the entire network infrastructure without the need to expand our staff exponentially, thus minimizing the company’s operating costs”.

The main purpose of any network is to enable safe and efficient communication between connected devices. In a typical logistic environment like warehouses, we are talking about a large number of end-points with diverse levels of built-in security, such as IPTV cameras, PDAs, handheld barcode scanners, wireless headsets or dispatch consoles, to name a few.

“A full site survey allowed us to identify problems with the Wi-Fi wave propagation stemming from a couple of factors, including the specific, high-bay storage environment. Basing on the latest standards and practices, as well as the characteristics of each individual logistic center, our recommendation was to move from omni-directional access points to more directional coverage pattern of the Extreme devices”, says Paweł Zwierzyński, Network and Security Team Leader at Vernity who was responsible for the network design and implementation. “In the warehouses that are already operating in the new setup, the scale of observable issues with the network coverage, capacity and bandwidth has dropped radically. Today, the wireless network works in a far more reliable way. The data rates have also gone up significantly”.

In order to enhance the protection of critical data, applications and users, Vernity proposed to leverage the hyper-segmentation feature of Extreme Fabric Connect solution. This allowed the IT team at Dino Polska to easily set up a number of private, fully isolated virtual networks without any visibility and accessibility from an IP perspective, thus improving their security posture dramatically.

“The sole fact that we are able to see in real time who is doing what in the system goes a long way for us because it’s done mainly in the management tools. The integration of the access lists with Active Directory was also very helpful because now we are able to control the environment in case one of the network administrators is out of office – we don’t need to go through all the switches and configure everything again from scratch”, the Head of IT Infrastructure emphasizes.

Additionally, the new solution implemented at the office premises also included ExtremeControl, a network access control system (NAC). User’s identity-based policies defined by NAC are consistent across both wired and wireless access.

“Thanks to the granular visibility and in-depth control, we are able to control users and devices across networks. The access level for each device that connects to the network is controlled by NAC, and then it is automatically assigned to the right VLAN, with the correct privileges. It is done without interfering with the switch configuration and without having to define what’s being plugged in the specific port. The only thing left to do for the administrator is management”, Bartłomiej Dudka explains.

There’s an old saying – “if you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards”. Although the pace of the business growth has been nothing short of amazing, Dino Polska has not yet said its final word. In the next couple of years, the company has its eyes set on further investments that will drive the expansion of the store chain, and that includes building new distribution centers.

The networking solution delivered by Vernity has proved successful and efficient enough to convince Dariusz Włodarczyk and his team to create a carbon copy for the company’s new logistics center in central Poland, set to start its operation at the turn of spring and summer of 2023. The extension of the network access control system to the rest of warehouse locations is also in the plan.

“Generally speaking, thanks to the support provided by Vernity and the technology from Extreme Networks, all the objectives we set for this project have been achieved. Setting up new locations is now easy and intuitive”, Dariusz Włodarczyk sums up.

The company specializes in IT services aimed at improving cyber-security, efficiency and reliability of the enterprise information infrastructure. Using their vast knowledge and experience, Vernity’s engineers support clients with choosing the most suitable technical solutions to meet their business goals. By handling the design and implementation of tailor-made solutions for data center and network infrastructure environments, Vernity helps companies maintain their business continuity. The list of Vernity’s clients includes leading companies from the retail and logistics sector in Poland. On top of that, the company also provides comprehensive Project Management services.

Contact details:
Vernity Sp. z o.o.
Polska 60 St.
60-595 Poznań, Poland
Tel.: +48 61 624 34 04
E-mail: biuro@vernity.pl

Bartłomiej Dudka
Customer Care and Sales Team Leader
Tel.: +48 504 139 691
E-mail: bartlomiej.dudka@vernity.pl