Romano's Macaroni Grill selects IRG to serve high speed managed broadband for its North American Locations

CIO Challenges

Macaroni Grill sought a fully managed service provider equipped to deliver turnkey solutions for all of its North American locations. The company needed a cost effective, PCI-complaint network to keep pace with the busy restaurant chain that afforded them the ability to concentrate on driving business sales and not managing their network partners. Further, Macaroni Grill intended to fully utilize the network to power broadband-enabled applications such as VoIP, IP-based Video Surveillance, and Dynamic Signage all while having a single company that had the experience and expertise to manage the Macaroni Grill chosen VPN infrastructure. In spite of economic challenges, the company needed to deliver an enhanced customer experience while cutting costs in less than 45 days.

IRG Solution

After a successful proof-of-concept program, Macaroni Grill has partnered with IRG for Network Services, including wireline broadband and 3G Failover, TruManage Pro-Active Support, and RetaiLAN for turn-key integration.

One important aspect of the project is IRG's change management and maintenance of the existing Juniper VPN firewall investment. This is encompassed by IRG's total device management of the Macaroni Grill network. IRG will be providing full turnkey integration of the network, which includes staging, configuration, and onsite installation. Further, IRG offers next business day replacement of critical hardware, unlike competitors whose customers often lose valuable uptime by not being able to effectively manage this component. Not having the ability to react immediately to a store's infrastructure being down was not an option for Macaroni Grill.

The project has officially launched with the IRG assignment of a dedicated Project Management team to handle all aspects of the network implementation. This team ensures the entire process will be completed with minimal interruption to business operations and consists of a Project Manager, Project Administrator, and Network Engineer. Broadband provisioning and CPE procurement will be progressing transparently during the development of rollout, staging, and logistical plans.

IRG also included automatic 3G failover to maximize application uptime. 3G back-up allows Macaroni Grill to maintain the full use of all applications, even in a failover environment; unlike traditional dial-back up that may force clients to disable applications in the event of primary failover.

Mike Luzio, CEO of IRG stated, "Macaroni Grill is clearly a leader in the restaurant industry and well known for delivering a tremendous customer experience to its patrons. We needed to ensure the IRG project management team was able to deliver the same experience their Customer's are used to seeing by our team. It's a pleasure to serve a company with international reach, and we feel quite privileged that Macaroni Grill has selected IRG to serve as its managed service provider. We're off to a great start in this partnership and are excited to support Macaroni Grill so they can continue to deliver a powerful customer experience without interruption."

IRG Delivered

• Provisioning, coordination, and installation of both primary wireline and failover 3G Broadband for all store locations.
  
• RetaiLAN (Turn-Key Integration) - CPE Staging, logistics, in-store cabling, installation and testing of all services, including integration with client's existing Local Area Network (IRG|RetaiLAN)
  
• TruManage Complete and Total Device Management of the Full Wireline Broadband Network, Juniper SRX210 total device management, including but not limited: full change control on all equipment at stores level, next day business replacement of all routers on-site with IRG certified technician, complete management of all aspects related to the WAN infrastructure
  
• Pro-active network monitoring (IRG|TruManage)
  
• One comprehensive, easy-to-read invoice