Success Stories

Phibro Finds Need For Speed During Relocation, Consolidation, It Upgrade

At the same time Phibro’s Vice President of Information Technology, Jeffrey Rose, had identified numerous issues with the company’s 15-20 year-old IT infrastructure that he believed were thwarting communications capability throughout the organization. He explains, “Not only do we have our headquarters in New Jersey, we also have three other datacenters located in Quincy, IL, Guarulhos, Brazil and Petah Tikwa, Israel; as well as satellite offices in 12 other countries around the world. We decided that relocating and expanding our headquarters was the perfect opportunity to lay a scalable communications upgrade as well.”

Phibro Animal Health Corporation is the parent company of several subsidiaries and divisions, all global leaders in the manufacturing and marketing of animal health and nutrition products and fine specialty chemicals. All of the operating subsidiaries and divisions receive IT shared services from PAHC. This project laid the groundwork needed to enable global communications between the management teams of each subsidiary around the globe.

“Communication is the key to realizing our best potential,” Rose notes. “We are a company that has grown by acquisition as well as internally, and I believe that Information Technology should be an enabler of good business growth. From helping our management team and salesforces around the world to stay connected, to providing our datacenter teams with reliable technology and up-to-the-minute client service information, to ensuring our customers have dependable, fast access to our people and our products, the infrastructure’s capabilities are mission-critical for Phibro,” he adds.

Complicating matters further, Phibro’s plans needed to be executed by mid-December – just three months after the decision to move had been made. While locating and securing office space and planning for the physical move was daunting, the true challenge was by all accounts the IT upgrade. Rose began searching for the right solutions architects for the job, and after considering two firms that weren’t up to the task at hand, he contacted Computer Design & Integration.

Ray Ortega, Senior Technical Consultant - Convergence at CDI and one of the country’s leading IP Telephony experts, answered the call, and took on the challenge of implementing Phibro’s upgrade using the Cisco IPT technology in under three months. “The timeframe was tight, but we put together a CDI team that was able to analyze the needs so thoroughly at the front-end and create such a comprehensive install plan for our technicians to implement, that the project ended up being quite seamless,” Ortega explains. In addition to installing a complete IP Telephony system with groundwork for global expansion, CDI also replaced the infrastructure backbone using all new Cisco routers and switches with wireless capabilities, and provided UPS (uninterruptible power source) capabilities for business continuance and security.

“We were most impressed with the dedication CDI showed to our project,” Rose adds. “Their teams spent two weekends, nearly around the clock, in our new offices, working with our team and other vendors to integrate the two offices and ensure the systems would be up and running by the time we moved the personnel in,” Rose recalls. “Afterwards, CDI spent quite a bit of time training users on the new systems, and since the move, less than 5% of the transitional issues we’ve faced have been IT-related. Our network is faster, more stable, and we rarely have any unplanned downtime – which was a regular occurrence before the upgrade.

“We credit the consulting and delivery organizations within CDI, who – in coordination with the Information Technology team at Phibro Animal Health Corporation – were willing to do whatever it took for several weeks in order to get us up and running, for the fact that our cut-over was practically seamless to our users. We consider the project a complete success,” Rose says.

CDI and Phibro continue to work together on plans to expand wireless capabilities and IP Telephony to the corporation’s satellite offices in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. “When it comes to IT, Phibro continues to work with CDI,” Rose concludes. Malamed adds, “We are pleased to be Phibro’s trusted advisors, providing solutions that make good business sense and add value to the company. We’ll continue to do that, as we keep the lines of communication open with Phibro for the future.”

Computer Design and Integration, LLC is a privately-held, infrastructure services company that combines innovative and comprehensive business solutions and service with experienced professionals to simplify the complexity of emerging technologies. Founded in 1995, and named to the VARBusiness 500 for five straight years, the company is one of the fastest-growing IT consulting firms in the Northeast. CDI offers complete solutions in Architectural Design, Business Continuance, Backup and Recovery, Managed Support, Operating Systems, Enterprise Management, Networking & Security, and Application Development. For more information, visit CDI on the web at www.cdillc.com.

Phibro Animal Health Corporation was founded in 1947. It is a privately held company with worldwide operations achieving combined sales of more than $350 million annually. The company manufactures and markets more than 550 specialty chemicals, and serves more than 3,500 customers. Phibro Animal Health Corporation is headquartered in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey and employs over 1,000 people globally. More information can be found at www.pahc.com.

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