The challenge

Commencing with only five Directors, Silver Lake is a large ASX 200 listed gold producing and exploration company. Their resource base is in remote highly prospective regions including Mt Monger and Murchison goldfields and the Great Southern district of WA. Their strategy is to develop large production centres at Mount Monger, in the Murchison and the Great Southern with multiple mines at each centre.

Talking about that strategy is the easy part.

At the heart of the Silver Lake challenge was a need to connect sites in metropolitan, country and remote locations—from Perth to Kalgoorlie, from site to site, and to smaller  remote sites. No single solution would be sufficient for this to be achieved effectively – Silver Lake required a multi-faceted approach.

Beyond this challenge were a smaller subset of technical issues: security, the rapid growth and expansion of the existing network, remote support, secured remote access and how to  plan and deploy vendors.

The engagement brief

Silver Lake initially employed Reseau to set up and support voice and data capability when they moved into a new office and listed on the stock market. As the company has grown Reseau has delivered set up and support for every new and acquired site.

The Reseau Process

1. Reseau has provided a partnership approach, heavily involved in strategic consultation around IT applying the commitment of an in-house solution and the independent expertise of outsource consultants
2. Reseau provides a highly responsive service. The team is notified of any issues via SMS. That way they can pro-actively identify and respond to any concerns.
3. Reseau has developed a flexible retained service costing model including a cost per user factor which does not require a massive capital purchase from Silver lake to engage the service and better suits the service delivery model

Technical considerations 

1. Reseau established the three levels of connectivity that would facilitate the most
   rapid and effective transfer of information. This involved using fibre optic cable, point to point wireless, a dynamic multipoint private network and the 3G technology to encompass the diverse requirements of Silver Lake’s network of sites and offices
2. Reseau used Cisco technology (voice routers and unified communications) to provide communications.
   Each main site has an independent voice router. Where and when there was an issue
   with communications to a site Reseau leveraged inter-site connectivity to channel
   calls through another site.
3. Reseau identified the appropriate technology, virtualisation and Cisco routers, to facilitate further expansion so Silver Lake can enjoy further growth
4. It was important that Reseau could provide support services for both remote and approximate work environments. Reseau implemented procedures and standard operating environments to allow for a consistent level of support using a remote management system.
5. Reseau identified a range of security protocols to secure both data and services. This was
   crucial in a setting where the both employees and contractors accessed the network. Reseau used a range of technologies to facilitate this including:
   PPTP VPN, zone-based policy firewall, Active Directory, Group Policy, VLAN and
   SharePoint.

What is unique about the Reseau solution?

The uniqueness of Reseau’s solutions lies in the ability to restore and create function and efficiency from a situation where there had been little. The solutions and technology in themselves were not necessarily unique, it was the application of these technologies that brought function to the IT operation.

By developing detailed planning and systems and strong relationships with third party providers, Reseau was able to deliver the tailored solution Silver Lake required. Experience with a diverse range of technologies without being tied to any single proprietors solutions allowed them to integrate a range of solutions for the optimal outcome.

In a highly competitive environment where mining companies are considered prized clients, Silver Lake has suppliers knocking on their doors for business every day.  Silver Lake not only has retained Reseau without the need to establish in in-house technical team, but they are now developing the relationship.

Reseau’s unique flexible partnership approach is reflected in the continued expansion of services they provide to Silver Lake. They are currently working to develop data mining, document management and information management services to provide accurate reporting and forecasting.