This Riyadh-based data center will serve as the IT operations hub for over 130 food outlets across the Kingdom and will host applications that are vital to services offered to the quick service restaurant giant’s customers and employees in the country.
According to Waleed Naseer F. Al Saud, VP, Business Support, at Riyadh International Catering Corp (RICC), the data center is the ‘brain’ of the organization’s IT infrastructure and is critical to delivering applications such as email exchange, ERP, reports, data base, web applications, digital signage, and Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB).
Waleed Al Saud said, “To maintain the highest quality in our food and service, we have to ensure that our back-end operations and applications are also of the highest quality. We therefore needed a connectivity infrastructure that was very high-performance, reliable, and capable of scaling to support the rapid growth that we have been enjoying in Saudi Arabia.”
Guided by We Care Technology, R&M’s local partner, McDonald’s engaged with the Swiss manufacturer. The quick service restaurant giant benefitted from R&M’s strong presence in the Kingdom as the vendor’s consultants also helped frame the BOQ for the project.
The new data center now boasts a number of cutting-edge R&M solutions including Cat6A cabling, HD patch panels, OM3 fiber optic cabling, server cabinets, as well as R&M’s copper and fiber optic raceway systems. These overhead raceways have been implemented to ensure the bend radius of the fiber optic cabling is well maintained and controlled within standard limits, to avoid any degradation in performance during daily moves, adds and changes.
Manzoor Ali, Managing Director KSA, & Bahrain at R&M said, “As per McDonald’s request, the R&MinteliPhy system was also used to monitor – via SNMP – other devices in the network for more integration with the Building Management System (BMS) and active equipment. We also issued a 25 years system warranty to the customer after thorough testing and checking of all links. Two months after the installation and testing was completed, an extensive training was held for all the technical leaders as a part of R&M Academy.”
“Since the data center is the backbone and we have many mission-critical applications serving office employees, it is important for us to invest and maintain our world-class datacenter. R&M has provided us with comprehensive training on their products and on infrastructure standards for both office cabling and data center. They offer a 25-year warranty which guarantees performance, reliability and quality,” said Waleed Al Saud.
