Beca Brings Creative and Talented People Together to Transform the World

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, April 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Auckland's Sky Tower, "the Rock" at Wellington Airport, the Macau Tower and the SkyPark at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore are all landmark projects in the Asia-Pacific region, and they all have something in common: they are among the more conspicuous projects with which New Zealand's Beca Group (Beca) has had involvement.

Because Beca, one of the region's leading engineering consultancies, needs to harness the best talent from around the region to create added value for its Asian and international clients, the company is now using a state of the art solution from AT&T to connect its employees and offices throughout the region. Beca is now using AT&T's* Virtual Private Network (VPN) services in 11 offices in Asia Pacific, connecting to ten sites within New Zealand. This allows Beca's corporate headquarters and branch offices, along with selected partners and clients, to have improved access to information and resources, enabling increased productivity and collaboration.

Large scale engineering projects are generally unique and technically complex, often with significant commercial risk to clients. Given the commercial issues, Beca needs to ensure risk-free communications with all project team participants and is therefore deploying AT&T's managed security services, including cloud and premises-based firewalls, throughout the entire fully-managed network.

For Beca's continued growth to be sustainable, it's essential to bring its best talent from around the region together, to truly differentiate its service and create added value for their Asian and international clients. Beca can also realize a number of benefits which will contribute to its growth ambitions, including:

• Improved collaboration across geographic locations via desktop video-conferencing and the sharing of very large two and three dimensional engineering design files;
• Consistent service for voice, video and data applications through a unified WAN service.

Quotes

"Our business is a wonderful rich mixture of great people doing fantastic work for successful and often visionary clients. AT&T helps us to connect our employees, to serve our clients better and most importantly to set our course for strong growth, high performance and further success as a truly great international business," said Robin Johansen, chief information officer of Beca.

"Following several years of rapid growth, Beca understands that they need a communications partner who can make them feel confident in scalability, consistency and reliability. We are able to bring our wealth of knowledge, access to significant resources and our world-class network infrastructure to ensure seamless and consistent communications to help Beca transform the world with creative and talented people," said Roger Payne, AT&T New Zealand country manager.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

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About Beca

Beca employs over 2,500 people across the Asia-Pacific region, centered around hubs in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. Beca consults to the buildings, transportation, power, water, industrial and defense sectors, providing engineering, planning, project management, cost management and valuations services.

Beca has won a number of major New Zealand business awards, including Most Reputable Organization in 2011 (Hay Group/Management magazine), Most Sustainable Large Business (Fairfax/PricewaterhouseCoopers/Sustainable 60 Awards), Company of the Year in 2010 (Deloitte Top 200 Awards), and International Business of the Year in 2009 (New Zealand Trade and Enterprise).

Established in New Zealand in 1918, Beca has provided engineering design for numerous landmark projects, including Auckland's Sky Tower, Tauranga's new harbor bridge, "the Rock" at Wellington Airport and the NZi3 innovation center at the University of Canterbury. Offshore projects include the Macau Tower, Singapore's National Library, SkyPark at Marina Bay Sands, Gandaria City in Jakarta and the runways at Melbourne Airport.

About AT&T

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation's fastest mobile broadband network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet, voice and cloud-based services. A leader in mobile broadband and emerging 4G capabilities, AT&T also offers the best wireless coverage worldwide of any U.S. carrier, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries. It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verse® and AT&T |DIRECTV brands. The company's suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world. In domestic markets, AT&T Advertising Solutions and AT&T Interactive are known for their leadership in local search and advertising. 

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SOURCE AT&T Inc.