Nearing 42 years in the country, Dole's pineapple plantation in Polomolok, General Santos is not only the largest in the Philippines but also the largest in the world. With the help of technology, Dole Philippines maintains thousands of hectares of land to grow pineapple and papaya which are processed into concentrates, chunks, tidbits, and fruit cocktails for local and international markets.

'Without technology, we couldn't survive,' said Kevin Davis, president of Dole Philippines. For Davis, gone are the days when people would go out on horses to manually check the crops. 'Now, the whole farm is mapped in GPS (geographic positioning systems). Our workers can easily monitor which crops are ready for harvest, and which areas are ready for planting,' added Davis.

Aside from monitoring the crops, another important aspect of operations in Dole is its plant-to-plant communication. Coordination between regional plants is a crucial element, especially when dealing with perishable goods. A good communication infrastructure should be in place to ensure the efficiency of operations. For Dole Philippines, a glitch in any of their systems, especially one as important as communications, is not a risk they are willing to take.

Until 2001, Dole was managing their telecommunications needs. But the company decided to focus more on food production rather than on maintenance of their network, so they signed GlobeQUEST to take care of the worries. 'What GlobeQUEST did for Dole was to maintain its point-to-point regional network via international private leased line,' said Ryan Pangilinan, GlobeQUEST manufacturing segment marketing manager.

However, this is still not as cost-effective as having all the regional networks connected to each other. Because of this, GlobeQUEST is currently migrating Dole's domestic and regional network to a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) 'based Internet Protocol ' Virtual Private Network (IP-VPN). 'This enables any of Dole's domestic and regional sites to coordinate seamlessly, 24/7, through voice and data communications,' said Pangilinan.