Brocade Mobility Solutions Streamlines Operations at Neos Airline

Brocade^® (Nasdaq:BRCD) today announced that Neos Airline, part of Alpitour group, Italy’s market leader in tourism and leisure, has completed the deployment of the Brocade Mobility RFS 6000 Controller and Brocade access points as the basis of its wireless LAN (WLAN) infrastructure across its headquarters at Malpensa Airport, Italy. The Brocade Mobility solutions have enabled the airline to enhance employee mobility (i.e. access critical aircraft data anywhere, anytime in the engineering department) and secure access to its spare parts database, e-mail, aircraft movements and deliver Internet access for field engineers. In addition, this solution also provides high levels of network resilience; the wireless network solution can be used as a backup in case of fault of the wired network, thus avoiding downtime which can cost $15,000 per hour per aircraft

Neos Airline began its operations in March, 2002, with the first flight from Milan Malpensa to Cap Skirring and Dakar Senegal, Africa. The airline’s main base is located in Milan Malpensa Airport, with other bases in Verona, Bologna and Rome, and covers many leisure destinations with charter and scheduled flights.

In order to provide resilience for the wired network, in mid-2009 Neos planned to implement a WLAN in its headquarters. Project management, installation and deployment was conducted in cooperation between Neos’ IT department and VOXplus, Brocade’s partner in Milan. At the end of 2009, the WLAN was in place and fully operating.

"We selected the Brocade solution as we already have Brocade’s Fabric Switches connected to our IBM blade center and storage disks, and in four years we never had a fault on the entire infrastructure. This means a great deal to us in terms of business continuity,” said Eugenio Brusa, IT Manager at Neos Airlines.

"We decided to implement a WLAN in order to streamline our operations, but before deploying a complex infrastructure where classified data is transmitted across the wireless network, we needed to ensure that strong security protocols were in place as this is a mandatory requirement for the Italian and European Aviation Agency,” added Brusa. "The mission of the IT department is always to seek the highest standard in terms of safety and availability. This means give access to required information anytime and everywhere, as we need to be operational 24/7 to keep in touch with the fleet - every unscheduled downtime is completely unacceptable. All information on our network is critical from flight plans, weather charts and forecasts, maintenance updates and crew schedules. Any downtime can cause aircraft delays costing up to $15,000 per hour for each of the aircraft we have in fleet.”

The Brocade WLAN provides greater mobility across Neos’ facility and increased staff productivity. For example, field engineers can access fleet information and aircraft blueprints directly from the tarmac, using PDAs, instead of coming back to their office. In addition, all students (Neos staff and those from other airlines, such as Austrian Airlines) attending Neos’ bi-monthly training courses are not restricted to the existing physical network ports, but can now enjoy the flexibility to work everywhere in the training facility, thereby enhancing their learning experience.

An advantage compared to the previous environment is the ability to offer external consultants and visitors dedicated access to high-speed internet connections, through the WLAN: "We have established WLAN secure zones, in accordance with the Italian and European Aviation Agency’s guidelines, so corporate data is segregated (with strong security policies) from public access – a key requirement which Brocade provides. The Radius system has been implemented, with Neos’ proprietary certificates, and WPA2 encryption, while visitors access the network via a DMZ (Demilitarized zone). This allows Neos to bypass the corporate network without any need for an ad hoc firewall. With the Brocade solution Neos has reached all its targets,” concluded Bursa.

To learn more about Brocade’s family of Mobility solutions visit http://www.brocade.com/sites/dotcom/products-solutions/products/ethernet-switches-routers/enterprise-mobility/product-details/mobility-family/index.page

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Brocade^® (Nasdaq:BRCD) develops extraordinary networking solutions that enable today’s complex, data-intensive businesses to optimize information connectivity and maximize the business value of their data. For more information, visit www.brocade.com.

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