Brisbane's Comscentre hits 2000-site milestone in AusPost network upgrade

Brisbane-based managed services provider Comscentre has revealed its ongoing network upgrade for Australia Post has reached the halfway mark with 2000 sites upgraded.

The contract, which was awarded in August last year, involves the installation and deployment of Cisco Meraki SD-WAN infrastructure and a transition of network connectivity across 4000 metro, regional and remote sites.

Comscentre said the project is tracking ahead of schedule with 2000 sites completed, along with a number of data centres stood up and a completed pilot program. This comes in spite of having to reschedule a number of upgrades due to the bushfires from earlier this year and COVID-19 restrictions.

Comscentre executive director Cameron Quilty said the milestone is a particularly significant one for Comscentre.

“It represents the halfway point of what was, at commencement, the largest network deployment of its type in the world. More importantly though, it’s also this great validation of Australia Post’s decision to place their trust in Comscentre for such a significant project,” he said.

“It’s no secret that the market was shocked when we announced we’d won this project, so it was hugely important to us that we demonstrate why we were successful, why Australia Post chose us – and here we are, half way through transforming Australia’s largest retail network, ahead of schedule and delivering substantial benefits to one of Australia’s most recognisable and most trusted brands.”

Comscentre said AusPost benefits with each site cutover from increased network resilience and uptime, as well as substantial reductions in ongoing network operating costs. Its internally developed enterprise network management platform One Touch Control also provides AusPost increased network visibility and control.

AusPost CIO Munro Farmer said the milestone was testament to lots of hard work, and “even more impressive” given the logistical issues and constraints of a pandemic.

“This has been a big effort for all of the teams involved, both across Australia Post and Comscentre, and speeding the cycle time has helped us just as we’re moving quickly to support parcel volumes, allowing us to stand up services much more quickly than we were previously able to,” he said.