Simplifying the boots business

Here’s how Australia’s oldest and largest footware company Blundstone managed to find the right path for its small IT team to run a global business.

Blundstones’ new fashion boot. Picture: Tim Carrafa

With an expansion into North America, iconic Tasmanian boot manufacturer Blundstone found it had to manage operations spanning two continents. Simplifying the company’s IT infrastructure became a priority for the business.

As Australia’s oldest and largest footware company, established in 1870 and exporting into fifty different countries around the world, Blundstone is familiar with the complexities of dealing with a global marketplace from their Moonah head office in suburban Hobart but their expansion into the United States added new challenges to the business.

“Essentially we’ve had to engage a third party warehouse in the US and have them connected into our Hobart office so they can operate off our ERP system. We had to make sure our Australian network was capable of handling a 24x7 operation where previously we only had to operate 12 hours a day,” Blundstone CIO, Andew Ross, told The Australian.

“It meant we had to have that dependability and reliability of our IT network in Hobart.”

Most businesses would be looking at a public cloud to manage those needs but Mr Ross not convinced providers have that level of maturity, “Cloud infrastructure even now is in its relative infancy and we wanted to make sure that we had all bases covered.”

“There are a number of issues,” Mr Ross explains for his reluctance to use public cloud providers. “One is I prefer to control our own destiny that we control our own stability and we’re not relying on third parties and we’re ensuring we have our own stable platform. Effectively we’re running our own cloud for our own purposes.”

Until recently a company like Blundstone would have found managing a private cloud a difficult and demanding task, however the advent of hyperconverged infrastructure allows system administrators to consolidate and simplify complex and cumbersome legacy IT systems, making the practice now feasible for smaller organisations.

“There were a number of benefits that Simplivity had for me; it reduced the amount of hardware we needed to have in place and it provided a redundancy in the sense we now have a separate offsite system in our Melbourne warehouse that’s fully synchronised with our Tasmanian office,” says Mr Ross. “If anything happened in Hobart we could straight away fire up the Melbourne system without interruption. That redundancy was a winner for me.”

While the total cost of ownership is expected to be substantially cheaper with the virtualised software solution than using the more traditional infrastructure with different devices carrying out discrete tasks, Blundstone found the upfront cost was around the same. The transition between technologies was however relatively seamless.

For other organisations looking at a similar technology change Mr Ross recommends managers to be clear about their objectives. “Blundstone has a very definite policy around our IT systems and we see that as a key part of who we are in terms of customer service and support both internally and externally. We’re always looking for maintaining our currency with technology.”

Part of maintaining that currency is replacing PCs and laptops every three years. “We always take the view it’s worth our while to invest in advances so we’re always getting the benefits of the latest technology,” Mr Ross states. “My advice to other companies is always be aware of what the latest technology is and making sure you’re getting the benefits of that technology within your business.”

Blundstone shows how a small IT team can run an operation across two continents using software defined and hyperconverged infrastructure with tools like Simplivity. For many organisations these technologies let them do more with less.