How scalable data centres connect a global logistics giant from the core to the edge.
A 100-year vision
No one can accuse Mainfreight of thinking small. You have to think big to take a local trucking company in New Zealand and grow it to a global logistics giant — one with warehouses around the world. That bold thinking about growth means they don’t just think five or 10 years down the road. “The 100-year vision is something that our company founder came up with,” said David Hall, Group IT Infrastructure Manager of Mainfreight. “If we invest 50 million dollars in a new facility, we’re not doing that thinking about it over the next 20 years — we’re thinking about that over the next 50 years or so.”
To understand why Mainfreight plans their growth with such a longterm strategy, it’s important to understand the mentality that drives this ambitious company, from the bottom of the world, to reach the top of their industry.
A dedicated team
It takes a special team to build such a strong global operation from the remote islands of New Zealand. “We’ve always prided ourselves on our culture and our people, and we think that’s a differentiator between ourselves and our competitors — both in New Zealand and other countries,” said Hall. Whether they’re working in reception / customer services, on the depot floor, moving freight, or as a customs agent, the pride is evident and helps the company achieve its goal to be a global logistics company that people can trust. “That’s made a huge difference in our ability to grow rapidly over the last 35 years,” said Hall. Hall attributes this attitude to the reputation of New Zealand having a strong work ethic and independent streak. New Zealand is not a huge manufacturing country, so they are highly reliant on imports and exports. As a leading shipping company, Mainfreight plays a big part in the ongoing economic development of New Zealand. That unique attitude makes them very particular about who they choose as partners.
A partner who delivers
“Schneider Electric isn’t just a vendor, they’re a partner of ours,” said Hall. “As our company also grows and develops we see Schneider potentially getting involved in other parts of our business, whether it is building management, services, or the many other solutions which they can provide as well.” EcoStruxure software provides Mainfreight with the necessary visibility to maintain the performance and the efficiency of their infrastructure. The software is particularly beneficial on the company’s operations, helping them monitor, manage and maintain data centres that are remote to where IT teams are based.
The option to add more batteries to the UPS, the ability to expand power and cooling, the software capability to provide the management and monitoring a global operation craves — those are key reasons Mainfreight chose the EcoStruxure solution. This goes beyond just modernising their systems to be set up for technological advances. It also means collecting data that allows Mainfreight to pursue new services to customers that give them an edge on the competition. “The ability to provide big data-type analytics on what their business is doing in terms of stock levels and other things like that, has become quite an invaluable thing,” Hall explained.
Mainfreight’s systems have grown as the company has grown. There’s been a shift from the use of manual systems into automated systems, with opportunities for the use of Electronic Data Interchange to automate the way customers transact with them and vice versa. “As a logistics company, we’ve become this hub for data moving in and out of our business,” said Hall. “We are developing ways to capture that data, manipulate it, analyse it, and provide something useful back to our customers they can then use to help their businesses grow.”
Modernising for the future
To address organic growth, and to accommodate where the business is moving with the demands on data storage and analytics, Mainfreight constructed a new data centre in New Zealand which houses all the necessary infrastructure to provide the platform to deliver those exact types of services. Pressed with a tight deadline due to an expiring facility contract, Mainfreight and Schneider worked together to overcome the construction challenges and achieve the data centre build requirements ahead of schedule.
“The speed at which Schneider was able to implement the solution gave us the breathing space in other parts of the project, like the build of this data centre with some of the other providers,” Hall said. Mainfreight takes pride in their ambitious corporate culture — it powers their dedication to be not only a leader in their industry, but play an important role in the growth of New Zealand as well. In Schneider, Mainfreight has identified a partner they can depend on to help them fulfil their bold promises for the future.
