The client is a large, Europe-based packaging manufacturer that relies heavily on internet connectivity to run its business. It is globally distributed, with offices in Europe, Asia and North America, and supports employees working remotely from its headquarters and 220 regional offices around the world. The company hosts four web-based applications in-house that are crucial to day-to-day operations: email, a web server, FTP and a web order application through which customers upload production requests around the clock.

The manufacturer had only one data line carrying each department's traffic. That line was unreliable, failing for one to two hours a month on average, and once it was down for more than 12 hours. The company already had both an MPLS connection and a broadband connection, but they were not configured to fail over to each other.

The business impact was direct. The company accepts production orders 24 hours a day through its order portal, and its IT manager reported that orders would fall from 3,000 a day to 1,000 when an erratic connection disrupted the line. Email, the web server, FTP and the customer ordering application all depended on the same fragile link.

The IT executive considered switching providers but recognised that the real problem was depending on a single internet connection for all mission-critical data. Setting up a VPN for remote employees at the headquarters and 220 regional offices made a redundant WAN even more necessary. After an exhaustive search, the company chose FatPipe.

The company integrated FatPipe SD-WAN into its network, binding two data lines from separate providers for redundancy and increased speed of IP data transfer. Rather than buying new circuits, it used its existing primary MPLS connection together with the separate broadband connection that had never been set up for failover.

FatPipe SD-WAN provides both inbound and outbound redundancy by aggregating the two lines. When a disruption occurs, FatPipe's WARP technology senses it and automatically reroutes traffic to the available line, so the company avoids the damaging effects of intermittent WAN failures. FatPipe also integrated seamlessly into the existing legacy network, helping the manufacturer transition to a state-of-the-art SD-WAN without a rebuild.

Redundancy was the primary goal, but load balancing across the two connections eliminated the bottlenecks the company experienced on a single line and delivered a noticeable speed gain as an added benefit. According to the IT manager, installation was easy and support was great.

• Internet has been up 100% since the SD-WAN was implemented, even when one of the two ISP services goes down
• Twice the speed of the previous single internet connection
• Monthly outages of one to two hours, once exceeding 12 hours, replaced by 100 percent WAN uptime
• Users no longer complain about slow speeds after load balancing removed bottlenecks
• Existing MPLS and broadband lines reused, with no change to the legacy network
• Easy installation and strong support reported by the IT manager