About Mazars.
Mazars is an international, integrated and independent organisation, specialising in audit, accountancy, tax, legal and advisory services and is currently ranked in the top 10 in the UK for accountancy. They are also one of the largest, most respected firms in the world, boasting 18 UK offices and 7 international offices, with 1,700 employees and 140 partners. Understandably Mazars seek the very best of breed technology in order to support their staff allowing them to focus on their clients, wherever they may be or whatever their requirements. So much so that one of their key business drivers is fostering a accountability, efficient and agile structures and organization, enhanced performance and creation of long-term value. As the business grew and continued to internationalise, their current infrastructure became increasingly unfit for purpose which is why they sought a new system.
The Challenge.
For many multisite businesses, embracing the Cloud will often result in multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) no longer being sufficient to address today’s WAN requirements. There is a desire to operate at ‘cloud speed’, but many organizations may be reluctant to transition to a broadband WAN, often referred to as a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), overnight.
But when the company opened its international branch sites in Australia, Delhi and New York, Quality of Service (QoS) across its existing MPLS WAN architecture began to diminish. the company soon began to realize that its existing WAN infrastructure was not able to offer the same level of service it provides its UK sites at its international branch offices. Users at its global sites struggled to connect to cloud-based applications, such as Citrix and Skype which meant Mazars required a solution that would allow them to leverage a hybrid WAN approach, where lower cost, higher bandwidth broadband services could be used to complement MPLS services and prevent the backhauling of all traffic to the central site. It critical to that was a solution that was WAN transport agnostic.
The Solution.
Mazars turned to Wavenet and the use of one of our key partners, Silverpeak, for a solution that would support their transition to a hybrid WAN. They wanted a solution that increased bandwidth capacity and network availability, whilst simultaneously improving application performance, leveraging existing network investments and reducing total WAN cost. After conducting a pilot of the Unity EdgeConnect™ SD-WAN solution, Wavenet installed the Silver Peak solution at Mazars’ international sites in Australia, Delhi and New York, as well as at 15 of its UK sites, due to its high-performance and reliability.
Transitioning to a hybrid WAN model can be achieved with minimal disruption and cost. Internet services can be introduced to the WAN without impact on application performance or the existing MPLS network – which was a key requirement of the business.
Internet services can be introduced to the WAN without impact on application performance or the existing MPLS network. The EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution automatically selects the optimum path for every application. This can restrict business-critical traffic to MPLS networks, while directing less critical traffic across the internet VPN. Given industry averages for bandwidth costs, payback for an SD-WAN investment starts immediately. Indeed, starting with its Sydney office, Mazars is reducing its dependence on international MPLS lines by migrating to local internet breakout. This will deliver secure, direct branch to cloud application access while providing the highest levels of application performance.
Mazars is also making use of Silver Peak Unity Orchestrator™ global management software for unprecedented visibility and control of data center and cloud-based applications. Its unique ability to centrally assign business intent policies to secure and control all SD-WAN traffic will help the company achieve its future mission of moving away from Citrix and embracing a fully cloud-based environment using Microsoft Azure and Office 365.
Why Wavenet?
Wavenet worked very closely with Silver Peak to gather the requirements for Mazars, creating a solution that could meet all of their needs now, but also have the flexibility to scale and grow with the business.
Since the deployment, Mazars has reduced WAN traffic by more than 40 percent, enabling the highly distributed organization to deliver cloud-based applications across its UK and international offices. Since improving the QoS across its WAN, employees are benefitting from better-performing cloud applications, while keeping costs to a minimum. The solution resulted in increased user productivity and agility, whilst also increasing application performance too.
“Silver Peak has become a fundamental part of our infrastructure. Building our global IT infrastructure from the ground up, we would not have been able to provide a decent level of service to our users without the Silver Peak SD-WAN solution. What’s more, the implementation was pain-free and as we look to move home into a fully cloud-based environment, Wavenet will help us to manage that transition – and our costs.”
– David Bennett, Chief Technology Officer