Tata Communications Signs $20mn Deal With KION Group for Their Global WAN

Tata Communications, today announces that it has won a multi-year contract with the KION Group, the second largest global manufacturer of forklift trucks and warehouse technology, to provide global WAN services to the group’s 280 sites and 22,000 employees across 30 countries worldwide. The USD $20 million deal will see Tata Communications replace the KION Group’s existing stable of multiple WAN providers with a single, global, intelligent network. This network is a critical element in achieving the KION Group’s Strategy 2020 objective of harnessing its global potential even more effectively.

For the end user this will mean faster application delivery to any device, anywhere, at any time. The KION Group’s IT department will benefit from lower management costs, greater control of the end user experience and the ability to respond rapidly and visibly to the changing needs of the business.The new global network will form an important pillar of the KION Group’s Strategy 2020 plan to create economies of scale across the entire group with its six global and regional brands. The strategy is designed to grow the €4.5 billion KION Group, focusing also on profitability, resilience and capital efficiency. Consequently, the group needs to create an environment where IT is an enabler of productivity and innovation as well as the key connection between the KION Group’s sites spread across 30 countries.

The Global WAN rides on Tata Communications’ wholly-owned subsea cable network, which is the largest and only such network to circle the globe. Over 24% of the world’s internet routes use Tata Communications’ network,

Dr Walter Grűner, Chief Information Officer, KION Group, says, “A single global provider would enable us to simplify our network management, but the advanced services that Tata Communications provides are going a step further in allowing us to take complete control of the traffic on our network.”

The press release said, KION Group’s new network will be application aware. This will allow an understanding of the types of data flowing across the WAN, and provide new levels of understanding to the IT department for faster, more responsive applications. Tata Communications’ Application Aware Networking approach enables IT departments to examine not just the performance of applications being used on the network, but how effectively they are being delivered to users on a person-by-person basis. This means that instead of monitoring network-centric issues such as jitter and up-time, CIOs can understand which applications are creating the most strain on the network, increasing the quality of service delivered to end-users.