Since Alloy Yachts launched its first super-yacht in 1985 the Henderson-based boat builder has grown to become recognised as one of the world leaders in the construction of large sail and motor yachts.

All Alloy vessels are built to order and they have ranged in length from 30 metres to 54 metres. While each craft is unique, Alloy yachts share an international reputation for reliable operation and the quality and innovation of its projects has been acknowledged with several international awards.

The design and construction process involves working closely with naval architects, interior designers, and project managers who are based around the world and so a reliable Internet connection is vital to the business.

Like many businesses Alloy started out with a basic dial up connection but IT manager Trevor Kippie says the company soon outgrew this. Part of the reason was that Alloy’s Internet traffic includes large AutoCAD files, which are sent to and from naval architects and designers and often exceed 10 megabytes in size. Alloy needed a broadband Internet service provider, which would not only speed things up but would also deliver a reliable service, which was closely matched to its requirements.

Kippie says ICONZ has certainly met the need for reliability.

“There hasn’t been any downtime while we have been with ICONZ and if a certain server is offline for maintenance for example then ICONZ will tell us about it in advance and they will tell us when the work has been completed.”

Another advantage of using ICONZ according to Kippie is that trained staff are always available to be contacted when necessary.

“If we want to talk to someone at ICONZ it’s never a problem, even after hours. We don’t have any of that nonsense of dealing with recorded messages or voicemail,” he says.

Unlike many other providers Kippie says ICONZ is prepared to tailor its service to meet Alloy’s needs. “ICONZ gives us whatever bandwidth we want where other providers are only interested in selling you a package deal. That’s okay for home use but for business you need an ISP which is prepared to be more flexible.”

This flexibility is especially significant for Alloy because it has allowed the company to offer its customers an optional web cam service that allows them to view their yachts online in real time as they are being built. Customers can zoom in and out and view their yacht from different angles 24 hours, seven days a week. 

Kippie says the service is proving to be very popular with some of Alloy’s multi-millionaire customers.

“One of our customers in the US has got a plasma screen rigged up in his lounge which permanently displays a view of his yacht under construction.”

Another customer has used stills captured at 30 minute intervals to create a half hour long time-lapse film of his yacht being built.

Kippie says Alloy Yachts also offers its clients the option of video conferencing, which helps with communications to its boat yard in Henderson.

Because the bandwidth that ICONZ provides for the video conferencing and the yacht viewing service is separate from the dedicated, high-speed Internet connection for the day to day running of the business, the performance of the latter is not degraded. Furthermore, because ICONZ is willing to provide Alloy with the exact amount of bandwidth it requires, no bandwidth is wasted when customers do not elect to take up the viewing service.

Kippie says it is unlikely he will be shopping around for another service provider as ICONZ is competitively priced as well as being highly reliable.

“Overall the ICONZ service has been great and I am not going to go around trying to fix something that’s not broken.”

For more information about this case study contact
sales@iconz.net
www.iconz.co.nz

May 2005