CASE STUDY which was Neos and another vendor . It came down to basically looking at value for money and the reporting features and the benefits that it could bring to us . The Silver Peak and Neos solutions stood out for us as the primary candidate .
How has Neos Networks enabled secure , reliable connectivity across Bakkavor ’ s entire footprint , particularly data centre locations ?
We have multiple sites across the UK and the US and they ’ ve delivered their service using multiple carriers into those premises . We ’ ve got some very rural locations that are very difficult , but Neos has managed to use different carriers to deliver a resilient and secure service for our sites . And in the data centres , Neos has primary connections into there already so that was very quick and easy for us to deliver via the connectivity into those data centres .
How far does the operation of your network rely on data centre performance ?
Very heavily . A lot of our data is real time , we ’ ve got systems that are talking out to the cloud constantly for reporting and data analysis , as well as our factory systems are interacting and pulling orders in , we ’ ve got EDI systems , sending orders in from suppliers . So , our network is critical to the business .
How important are data centres in enabling your Digital Transformation goals ?
Very critical . Without the data centres the environment would be a lot more widespread and a lot more costly . It enables us to centralise our services but still maintain high availability and keep costs down .
How does the implementation ensure a robust , resilient network that maximises uptime and productivity for the customer ?
The service offers resilient connections with automatic failover . Subsecond failover means our users don ’ t really notice if one circuit fails , the traffic goes straight down the other circuit and nobody notices . This means we maintain the critical connections all the time . We also route traffic based on service level agreement . So , if we have certain traffic that needs certain requirements , the Silver Peak solution maintains that for us and makes sure that it routes the traffic down the circuit that ’ s the least busy .
How does the network infrastructure enable the smooth processing of your data and how important is this ?
For us , it enables it because of the resiliency and the control and granularity we ’ ve got around the traffic . So historically , we were an MPLS network meaning we had very little control over our traffic . With the Silver Peak solution and the Neos network it enables us to really granularly control that traffic which means we can restrict certain applications and prioritise more critical business traffic . So , we prioritise our team ’ s traffic , we prioritise our internal production system traffic , but we can restrict back normal Internet traffic .
How has digitalisation impacted the pressure on your networks and how does the solution address some of these challenges ?
Digital Transformation , especially at the start of COVID , has really ramped up and really progressed and I think that without the Neos and Silver Peak solution , we would have struggled because previously we had an MPLS network which was an active / passive network . With the Silver Peak solution it enables us to use both circuits so we can use both circuits at the same time , but still also maintain resiliency . So it ’ s enabled us to grow and scale very quickly . Another thing to note is that we had some new business requirements which we had to rapidly respond to and historically , with a traditional service , we would have struggled to get services in place . With the Neos solution and Silver Peak we very quickly put a 4g service in , put the site online within days – something which we have previously struggled to do .
How critical has this technology been for defining your overall business performance ?
I think it ’ s been very critical . The main focus for us is obviously around Digital Transformation and is a process that the business is currently going through . The SD-WAN solution gives us that flexibility to scale and grow very quickly and control that traffic and prioritise what we do and don ’ t need . p
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