Ravensden Plc is a Pan-European supplier of animal themed merchandise with over 2,000 products in their range. Having been established in 1975 Ravensden has a huge amount of experience, and prides themselves on efficient delivery and their ability to turn orders around rapidly. They strongly believe these attributes enable them to outperform their competition and allow them to differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market.

The company’s continued success is reliant upon effective use of IT. This technology, in turn, has to be supported by a fast, reliable and scalable network infrastructure. A refresh of the network hardware and the need for more cabling outlets was prompted by the planned implementation of a wireless warehouse management system.

Lynx Networks installed the original cabling for Ravensden several years ago and were invited back to extend the cabling infrastructure into a number of outlying distribution and warehouse buildings along with an upgraded network switching solution. As well as providing the bandwidth for the immediate needs, the hardware had to provide PoE (power over Ethernet) and needed headroom for future growth.

The solution centred on the 3Com range of switches interconnecting the customer’s dispersed set of buildings via new external optical fibre backbone cabling all linked back to a core switch. A Cat5e system was implemented internally within each building to complete the cabling infrastructure which was designed to be able to deliver 1Gig Ethernet to each user as well as providing PoE to the wireless network access points. Lynx registered the cabling system for a 20-year manufacturer’s warranty and for added piece of mind the specified 3Com switches were supplied with lifetime warranty.

Michael Papé, director at Ravensden, commented: "The network infrastructure was installed with the minimum disruption and integrated seamlessly with our new wireless system. Everything is running smoothly and quickly."