In 1971, Zinpro Performance Minerals was founded, based on a new biochemical process that delivered a simple, highly stable molecule that was easily absorbed and utilized by animals. Today Zinpro’s animal health products are used the world over to help improve and sustain health in farm animals including cows, steer, horses, pigs, and fowl. With headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Zinpro has two state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities located in Garner, Iowa and North Branch, Minnesota, and sales offices worldwide.

 With the company’s widely distributed research, production, and sales network, Thys Coetzee, director of IT for Zinpro, wanted to put in place a global, IP-based network so that all company communication, whether data, voice or video, would be straightforward to use and transparent throughout the entire organization. “My overall goal was to enable employees located anywhere, whether they are at a manufacturing plant in Iowa or a sales office in Japan, to communicate with each other and back to headquarters, whether they are at a desk or on the road,” says Coetzee. “We needed support from a good vendor to help implement this. Finally with Phenomenal Networks we had the right strength to define and use the right Cisco technology.” 

The Phenomenal Networks team, headed by company COO Dave Shepherdson, worked with Coetzee to map out an implementation plan that supported the company’s long-term IT strategy, with phases that could be brought online as the company grew. The plan had to support the global expansion of technology services, including the development of a disaster recovery/business continuity (DR/BC) site.

Both Coetzee and Shepherdson point out that this level of business continuity and disaster recovery is rare in the SMB world. “Although we are a small business with just 150 employees, we are operating 24 hours a day internationally,” says Coetzee. “In order to compete, we need to invest in this kind of technology. Cisco really backed our project and got the price to an ROI [return on investment] level that was reasonable for us.” Coetzee also notes that the additional investment in a Cisco solution paid off when they hit a problem with a carrier when cutting over the voice solution.

“We spent at least 24 hours on the phone with Cisco TAC [Technical Assistance Center], and our call was transparently routed among offices around the world to get it resolved quickly,” he says. “The Phenomenal team has sat right with me, even through the night, to work through issues. It is when things go wrong that you really know what kind of backup and support you have from your partner and vendor. Phenomenal Networks and Cisco deliver it.”