Credit: Mainfreight
Logistics giant Mainfreight is well down the track to what it describes as the IT infrastructure equivalent of a "brain and heart transplant".
Dave Hall, IT infrastructure and security manager, said the first part of the project called "build and transform Mainfreight’s aging nerve-centre", or Batman for short, covered the brain transplant with a replacement of server and storage hardware across the company's New Zealand data centres.
Alfred was the replacement of network equipment or the "heart transplant" of the New Zealand data centres.
"Our data centres in New Zealand are responsible for delivering technology services to our Asia-Pacific operations," Hall told staff in Mainfreight's regular newsletter.
"Planning for these projects took place in mid-2021, with orders being placed early, to allow for delays in manufacturing and shipping."
Equipment arrived late-November 2021 the gear was swapped-out in the live data centre in January and the backup data centre in February with no noticeable impact on the business.
The company had earlier rolled out Schneider Electric's data centre Exostructure, including expandable UPS, power, cooling, and enhanced software capabilities.
ICT spending at Mainfreight increased from $67.5 million in the year to 31 March,2021 to $79.5 million in 2022 with $17 million of that classified as capital investment. This included a hardware standardisation project for New Zealand, Americas and Europe to deliver a consistent global platform providing stability and security.
This decentralisation is in line with our management practices and will buck the trend of moving everything to the cloud, Mainfreight told shareholders in its 2022 annual report.
"Big thanks goes out to our IT infrastructure team for completing this project on time and we continue to have a stable platform from which to deliver core business systems for years to come," Hall said.
Group IT manager John Eshuis told staff Mainfreight's global air and ocean business was embarking on three key customer-facing software initiatives, adding features to the firm's order management solution, starting the redesign of the booking entry screen in the customer portal, Mainchain, and a review of global pricing and quoting tools.
The transport teams in Australia, New Zealand and the US were continuing to implement project “real time” – which puts control over information with the person doing the job, using mobile devices.
"This area is ‘deepening’ into the freight handling processes and the branches are adopting these technologies at a good pace," Eshuis said.
The capability of the Maintel analytics platform was also expanding with the focus on providing insight to customers’ supply chains.
Business as usual tasks for the IT teams that should not be forgotten included keeping up with branch openings, desktop refreshes, Wi-Fi upgrades and a significant cyber security programme, Eshuis said.
"When we get busy, it’s important to remind ourselves of the Mainfreight culture. That culture for us in IT means that we spend time in the branches, with the team, as much as we can," he added.
"For both new team members and long-serving ones alike, there is value in being in the branch. There is no better place to get a feel for the culture.
"Opportunities are found where the problems exist, you won’t find them behind a desk, you will find them when you talk to the team and see first-hand where the challenges are."
In Europe, the rollout of the Mainmove transport management system continued while the rest of the
European IT team were in the final stages of their migration to a new datacentre and pushing ahead with a significant upgrade of their warehouse management system.
