Networks in Action

Byer California is one of the largest garment manufacturers in the San Francisco area, with around 1,000 employees. It has seven main garment showrooms, where sales staff take orders for its lines of women's clothing, in such far-flung locations as Atlanta, New York, Dallas, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Byer California has developed its telecommunications capabilities to meet its business needs by moving with the mainstream of technological innovation and by keeping to the practical leading edge and thus avoiding betting its future on unproven vendors. Given that Levi-Strauss is just down the road, Byer California cannot afford to drop behind; even a five-day delay between order and production can have retail buyers going elsewhere.

Until 1987 Byer relied on overnight couriers, fax. and phones to move orders and reports between its manufacturing facilities and the showrooms. It then added a simple asynchronous dial-in service provided by BT North America, so that sales staff could tap into its host computer to check on the status of shipments. This was a cheap and simple system that worked well, but it was inflexible and cumbersome to operate. Changing a password or phone number had to be done from the head office. Communications to headquarters could be initiated only from the remote sites, not the other way around. The computer system hardware and software was outdated and required substantial technical expertise to change or update it. The system controlled the people, not the other way round. An IT manager at Byer said, "We didn't want our people worrying about [the system]. We wanted them selling garments".

In the late 1980s, Byer's San Francisco headquarters updated its technology base and moved to an Ethernet LAN that connected a range of UNIX minicomputers, Apple Macs, IBM PCs, and other workstations. It added an X.25 connection for the dial-in showrooms, but the LAN and all the applications on the minicomputers and personal computers were inaccessible to the salespeople.

In 1991, Byer implemented XLINK, a service of BT North America that provided a port-based X.25 capability; port-based means that the Ethernet LAN could connect directly to BT Tymnet's frame-relay VAN through a router box, in effect pushing the LAN into the showrooms. Thus two-way communication could occur, instead of just dial-in; there is no difference now between having a terminal 50 feet or 3,000 miles away.

XLINK is a bundled service; Byer pays a flat fee, with no itemization or usage charges. This is very much like a private network. XLINK provides electronic mail as well as X.25 connectivity, which has cut Byer's phone bills by over $100,000 a year. Whenever they had any problem with the old system, frustrated salespeople would stop trying to use the dial-in facility and phone someone in San Francisco for answers. Those people would have to take time away from their primary activity, which is shipping garments as quickly as they are made, to track down the needed information about production and shipping. In addition to cutting phone call services at headquarters by 99 percent, Byer saves on fax and courier; reports can be sent at night to remote printers instead.

The connection between the LAN and XLINK was originally through a 9.6-kbps leased line, which soon became overloaded by the new data communications traffic. In 1991, Byer went back to its VAN supplier, BT North America, for a solution. BT was preparing to announce its new ExpressLANE 56-kbps frame-relay service. Byer had become a beta-test site for this before it went operational in September 1991, by using the network service before it was "released" onto the market. The idea is that Byer would help BT track down any remaining errors and problems of installation and use and provide feedback. Byer understood that there would be "crashes" and bugs, but they would gain the advantage of moving through the learning curve ahead of other organizations.

ExpressLANE offered Byer "plug-and-play." The firm's technical support manager commented in early 1992 that "It's transparent connectivity without having to own a great deal of technology. . . . I can take my Ethernet LAN and just plug it into the network so that we can move data to our showroom". ExpressLANE provided all the network interconnection facilities, including dedicated port access, software bridge/routers, and 56-kbps access lines. The purpose was to be just a utility, on the same basis as the electric utility.

The difference between 9.6 kbps and 56 kbps was more than just one of transmission speed; it allowed Byer to add a new application of immense importance to its business operations: color images sent quickly to the showrooms. Byer's business rests on getting enough orders for a garment before it commits to production. A Levi-Strauss can make literally 10 million pairs of its 501 jeans and put them into inventory, but Byer would go broke trying to make to stock instead of manufacturing to order. If it brings out a new line at the first of the month and then decides it wants to add an additional design a week later, it takes five days to get samples made up and shipped to showrooms. That leaves 18 days to take orders for the new design before planning next month's production, which is not enough.

Now Byer makes up just one sample, makes a color slide, and transmits the slide to every showroom. Facsimile machines do not provide adequate clarity of color and resolution of image. The X.25 network can handle transmission, but frame relay is 10-15 times faster. It used to take 20-25 minutes to transmit a single image, which takes 4-5 megabytes of data to code (about 40 megabits); now it takes around three minutes. The process of creating, sending, and receiving the image remains complex and takes around an hour. The photographer's color slide is scanned into a multimedia workstation. Next it is cropped, cleaned up, and annotated on an Apple Mac, which accesses the workstation through the Ethernet LAN. It is then transmitted via frame relay.

When it reaches the showroom, the image is printed on a Macintosh color printer. The output is an 8 1/2-by-11-inch color photo as good as the original slide. Byer can now-send around 200 color images a month, which adds up to a significant advantage for a relatively small firm in a very competitive business. "Our salespeople can be taking orders for a new garment the day we add it to our line. Another company that has to send the actual garment will be at least five days behind. We can be booking orders during that time and if we can get the buyers to commit their budgets to us, they won't be spending it on someone else".

Frame relay did not exist as a product before 1991, and in 1992 only a few companies were even testing it. Most long-distance providers announced their own frame-relay service around mid-1992, with beta testing occurring in late 1992.

Questions for Discussion

1. Byer California once relied exclusively on overnight couriers, fax, and telephones to transmit orders and reports between its factories and showrooms. What caused them to update their technology base and install a new telecommunications network system?
   
   
2. What role did BT North America's XLINK service play in both expanding the capability of the Byer network and in reducing communications costs?
   
   
3. What role did the ExpressLANE 56-kbps frame-relay service play in the evolution of the Byer network and its ability to support the company's evolving needs with additional services?