Although JB Hi-Fi has rolled out an IP telephony-capable Nortel phone system across 120 of its 135 stores, it said it was cheaper to continue to use the legacy Telstra voice service than power up the VoIP feature.
Although JB Hi-Fi has rolled out an IP telephony-capable Nortel phone system across 120 of its 135 stores, it said it was cheaper to continue to use the legacy Telstra voice service than power up the VoIP feature.
(JB Hi-Fi in the Macquarie Centre image by maebmij, CC2.0)
JB Hi-Fi chief information officer Geoff Craig said that although Nortel's CS-1000 had
been easy to implement and worked well in the capacity it was being
used, VoIP wasn't a feature the retail chain had gone live with.
"VoIP was never a big success because we've already got such a
great spending relationship with Telstra that it was actually
cheaper to not use VoIP than what it was to roll out an entire
solution and support an entire VoIP solution," he told ZDNet.com.au recently. The New Zealand office does use a VoIP system, but he said it
required more support than the phone service the stores ran on in
Australia.
"[Telstra] actually changed our contract around so that our data
was at a highly supported rate and obviously an affordable rate,
gave us a fantastic discount structure and made it worth our while
to stay with the voice lines as they were, and not use VoIP," he said.
Despite not making use of the feature, Craig said he would still
implement Nortel's system if he could turn back time. "I've got a VoIP-capable phone system that I could turn on whenever I want," he said.
The only thing I find offensive about Telstra is their Next G
pricing.
Geoff Craig, JB Hi-Fi CIO
Currently, Craig is in the middle of negotiations with Telstra
for a new contract. Although in general the IT department runs as
cheap as it possibly can, Craig admits it has paid a premium
to hook up its stores via the telco's frame relay.
"Telstra has the best network around Australia," he said. "Most
other successful telco companies sit on top of Telstra's network.
The only thing I find offensive about Telstra is their Next G
pricing."
The Telstra contract is the firm's largest IT spend, Craig said,
although he wouldn't say how much the contract had been because of
the negotiations. The next largest spend was on a three-year
Microsoft enterprise agreement that cost the retailer around $2
million.
"If you'd ask me the pros and cons of the industry at the moment
I'd have to say that definitely under cons I'd have to say
Microsoft licensing," he said.
Although there were alternatives, the reality was that the Microsoft
products were often the standard, which JB Hi-Fi had to use to be
able to relate to its suppliers, according to Craig. "Our major
database or third-party application vendor for our point of sale
and back-end use Microsoft products," he said.
Craig has an almost non-existent IT budget to cover these costs.
He only fields an IT team of 18. "Everything we spend, we literally
get asked by the guys: how many CDs do you need to sell to pay for
this?" he said. "The mandate from the company especially around the
monetary scenario is: if it ain't broke, don't fix it," he said.
Everything we spend, we literally
get asked by the guys: how many CDs do you need to sell to pay for
this?
Geoff Craig, JB Hi-Fi CIO
A desktop refresh for the company's over 3000 machines is one
example of what JB Hi-Fi doesn't do, despite the fact that many of
its desktops are over five years old, he said. If one breaks, Craig said he
replaces it.
This is made possible, according to the executive, because the
applications the company runs don't require new hardware. "Because
we use terminal services predominately for a lot of our
applications delivered in store there's no speed difference," he
said. The Markinson inventory control system, which the company has
been running "since day dot", will operate even on an ancient machine
running Windows 98, he said.
Yet if he truly wanted something, he'd get the funding, he said.
"It's really easy with JB," he said. "If you need it, obviously the
company will support you and you can buy it."
One of the largest projects he is doing now is to do with data
de-duplication — the elimination of redundant data can
reduce the amount of back-up storage required by a factor of 10.
It meant quicker backups, according to Craig, and files could be
synced to a live office site for disaster recovery.
He's chosen a Data Domain system that will be rolled out with
consultants Thomas Duryea. The $100,000 implementation would be
finished in four weeks.
The company has also implemented a new mail archiving system and
has changed spam filtering vendor from MailGuard to FirstWave
(which it purchased through Telstra), because it had grown out of
the former small business focused system.