PERTH, Australia - October 21, 2003 - Cisco Systems® today announced that Woodside Energy, a leading Australian energy exploration company, has installed a Cisco® end-to-end Internet Protocol (IP) network at its Perth headquarters and at some of its offshore oil and gas rig sites. The network infrastructure will reduce Woodside's network operations costs and simplify network management. Woodside's strategic implementation of converged Cisco networking will include applications such as voice and video over IP, unified messaging, security, wireless local-area networking (WLAN) and storage area networking (SAN).
Perth-based Woodside is an Australian resources company with a growing international reputation as a successful oil and gas explorer, developer and producer. In 2002 Woodside decided to move its head office in Perth to a new, multistory building. Woodside selected Cisco Systems to provide an end-to-end communications system based on IP at its new head office and across its wide-area network (WAN). The solution combines local-area-network (LAN) switching, routing, WLAN, telephony, security and data storage.
It will consolidate Woodside's communications network, delivering significant productivity and network management efficiencies, with a vastly improved return on investment compared to the traditional LAN and private-branch-exchange (PBX) systems.
At is new head offices, Woodside's 2000 employees will benefit from a high-speed switched LAN infrastructure, based on Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series switches to service almost 4000 switched ports across a 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbone.
Cisco WLAN equipment, based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11b standard will allow users to connect wirelessly to the Woodside intranet across all 19 floors of the building. IP telephony and video infrastructure will provide voice and video services to all users, while Cisco Firewall Services module in the Catalyst 6500 and virtual private network technology will provide network security for users at the Woodside head office and for workers connecting to the network remotely.
The deployment of the 2000 Cisco IP phones at Woodside Energy's Perth head office follows the successful installation during the past 18 months of Cisco IP telephony and WLAN solution providing services to various oil rigs off the coast of Western Australia including services to Woodside offices in Mauritania in Africa.
Cisco SAN equipment will form the core of Woodside's business-continuance and data-management strategy. Cisco will deploy its director-class MDS 9500 Series switches as part of the storage solution, which will connect the new building to a disaster-recovery site using Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) across a 10 Gigabit Ethernet link.
Cisco director of Enterprise Sales, Australia and New Zealand, Jeff Sheard, said; "Woodside Energy has demonstrated technology leadership and Cisco has worked with Woodside to become its technology partner. The end-to-end nature of the network deployment will enable Woodside to generate significant operational efficiencies and lower the total cost of ownership while delivering new, integrated services across a scalable, secure IP network."
Woodside Petroleum's new building corporate network boasts a range of Cisco technologies, including Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches, Cisco MDS 9500 Series director switches, Cisco 7960 and 7940 IP phones, Cisco IP/VC 3540 Series videoconferencing system, Cisco Unity(tm) voice and unified messaging system, Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) and Cisco Aironet® 1200 Series wireless access points.
About Woodside Energy
Woodside Energy is a leading Australian resources company with interests in oil and gas exploration and production. It operates Australia's biggest resource development project, the North West Shelf Venture, in Western Australia. In 2002, the company reported sales revenue of $2.241 billion.
