Customer Success Story: European Automotive Supplier | Equinix

The Business Challenge: The global automotive market is based on a complex network of factories, R&D and logistics. To succeed,…

The Business Challenge: The global automotive market is based on a complex network of factories, R&D and logistics. To succeed, the best suppliers are interconnecting to create faster innovation and more efficient supply chains, speeding time to market. From its headquarters in Germany, this manufacturer of automobile components plays a critical role in the global automotive supply chain, producing ignition switches, electronic keys and door handle sensors for car manufacturers worldwide.

The company’s challenge is to drive continued innovation while maximizing efficiency in a connected global supply chain. The component manufacturer took a classic approach to connect supplier and customer locations, knitting together an MPLS network. Working primarily with Deutsche Telekom, the company brought in local providers where necessary. But this approach proved costly, unwieldy and unable to keep pace with dynamic business demands. Transferring large files across continents requires high throughput. As the quality of the MPLS network grew, so did the price the firm had to pay to keep up this global, homogenous network.