German telecommunications provider takes on the challenge of the Sahara Desert to serve the oil and gas industry
Remagen, Germany, 28 June 2010 – German specialist provider of telecommunications and broadcast solutions, atrexx Ltd. & Co. KG, has teamed up with Microsoft and iDirect to provide a remote communications solution for VAOS Ltd., a major provider of comprehensive construction and maintenance services to the oil, gas and petrochemical industries, employing a workforce of some 1200 specialists. VAOS’ main branch offices are located in Malta, Austria and Libya, with a number of smaller offices based in the middle of the Sahara desert - often hundreds of miles apart.
“Provision of communications infrastructure in remote locations is a constant challenge for the oil and gas industry”, Jean-Claude Bisenius, Managing Director of atrexx explains. “Oil and gas exploration teams and drilling rigs are often located in the most remote and hostile regions of the planet, meaning that more traditional means of communications cannot be rolled out without great expense or difficulty. For the oil and gas sector, the issue of secure communications is also a principal consideration. Satellite often provides the only solution to this problem.”
Stefan Tomek, IT Manager at VAOS explained: ”The expectations of VAOS to operate a modern and secure corporate communications network via the Internet also presented increased requirements on IT security. For example, access to SAP business management software solutions and services from external locations and from site-to-site Virtual Private Networks (VPN) had to be possible.” Regarding the applications that the VPN should support, Mr. Tomek added: ”VAOS was also looking for a reliable VoIP connection, centralized management out of Linz, Austria; and access to the Microsoft distributed systems at various locations.”
To ensure highly secure, reliable and error-free communications, VAOS selected atrexx to become a communications partner due to their ability to connect the company’s remote branch offices to the corporate network. The offices use a Virtual Private Network with Microsoft’s Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010, which guarantees a secure and reliable connection to all other branches via a satellite service provided by atrexx and iDirect’s iSCPC solution. Based on iSCPC, atrexx has developed a unique Quality of Service (QoS) that guarantees lower latency when using VoIP, despite many different types of traffic passing through the system that often operates on a small amount of bandwidth per link to the remote station in the desert.
Speaking of VAOS’ six-year partnership with atrexx, Stefan Tomek, concluded:” Thanks to the very high level of satellite knowledge, effort and support, atrexx has been and will be the right partner to realize our high demand IT solutions in the future!”
