About Our Customer

Werner Enterprises, Inc. is a premier transportation and logistics company with coverage throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico and China. Werner is among the five largest truckload carriers in the U.S. and number three in cross border trucking into Mexico. Its portfolio includes freight management, truck brokerage, inter-modal, load/mode and network optimization and freight forwarding.

Customer Situation

Trucking leader Werner Enterprises has quickly expanded from over-the-road trucking within the U.S. into global logistics management. Successful in Canada and Mexico, Werner sees continued international growth — particularly in the fast growing market in China — as its next big opportunity. Eager to take advantage of changing regulations, the new Werner Global Logistics division needed to rapidly and reliably leverage its logistics expertise and the IT infrastructure.

Our Solution

To support its global logistics management business, Werner uses an MPLS-based IP VPN solution that links its Shanghai operations center to its U.S. headquarters and data center. The network enables Werner to take advantage of load-management systems hosted at its headquarters to drive global growth. Converging Voice over IP (VoIP) over the same network cost-effectively enhances its communications. The strategy is working: Werner now serves more than 35 global customers in China, Latin America, the European Union and Africa.

The Results

As Werner rolls into the China market, the network is proving vital. IP VPN services connect Werner’s operations with the IT center in Omaha, enabling Werner to store and process information there without investing in new servers. VoIP travels over the same circuit. “VoIP gives us the ability to tie ourselves back to the corporate office and gives an ease of access between the Asian headquarters and our global headquarters,” said Eric Salverson, Assistant Director Analysis and Information Systems. “We’re leveraging the data circuit to move our global supply chain data, as well as email and simple file shares. The data side gives us the ability to extend our system without having to worry about reliability or uptime.” With continued Asia-Pacific growth in mind, Werner is now working on co-locating servers in AT&T’s Internet Data Center in Shanghai to support that expansion.

With three data facilities providing backup in Omaha, Werner takes business continuity very seriously. So there was great concern when an undersea earthquake off Taiwan recently cut submarine cables, disrupting public Internet service across Asia. For Werner in China, it was a non-event. “The AT&T network remained in place for us,” said Salverson. “The reliability of that underlying mechanism allows us to focus our efforts on other areas.”

AT&T has also smoothed Werner’s progress inside the country. “Within Asia, a lot of different telecommunications pieces have to be brought together to build the complete solution,” Salverson said. “Being relatively new to China, there are a lot of unknowns. AT&T was able to provide the complete end-to-end solution, and that has saved us a great deal of time and effort.”