Profindis implements WAN for dm Drogerie Markt

The best of the best: dm renews its wide area network

Profindis implements future-oriented WAN network for dm-Drogerie Markt

With almost 39,000 employees in more than 1,800 branches in Germany alone, dm-Drogerie Markt is one of the leading drugstore chains in Europe. To secure this position in the future, the company has to be able to master a wide range of technological challenges and meet increasing requirements.
The implementation of a more powerful hardware and a cross-company logistics platform was followed by the migration of the WAN network. Due to the increasing requirements of the drugstore chain, the maximum scalability limits of the WAN network were reached. In addition, an IPv6 protocol was lacking, which is necessary for future internet services.
For the migration, FILIADATA, the internal IT service provider of dm, has brought an experienced and competent partner on board with Profindis.

Numerous challenges mastered professionally

“The migration to IWAN was not an easy task with 3,200 routers in 1,800 branches”, explains Nasser Abu-Alia, managing director at Profindis. “Thanks to our many years of experience in the migration of networks with several thousand branches, we were convinced that we could successfully implement the project.” In addition to the large number of routers, the migration within three weeks during operation and without downtime was another challenge.
Profindis implemented an optimized Cisco IWAN solution based on BGP. Through intelligent routing a dual-active concept has been implemented and a third route via LTE established. The solution is fully redundant, provider-independent and suitable for the use of all bandwidths. In addition, with the IPv4 and v6 dual stack, the solution is well prepared for the future.

dm is satisfied

“Right from the beginning, we were convinced to have found the right partner with Profindis. Their experience and the intelligent concept were definitely crucial to this project. The transition to the new WAN has worked excellently,” summarizes Christian Stäblein, Head of IT at FILIADATA / dm.
In the last 5 years, Profindis has already migrated several large networks to intelligent WAN solutions. However, the migration at dm wasn’t the biggest project so far. Profindis has designed and successfully migrated more than 25,000 sites over the last 5 years.