sub-header
wand-icon-fade

CASE STUDY


Summit Design & Engineering, A Case Study

WAN Dynamics & Converged Network Services Group

Company Profile

Summit Design and Engineering is a compact engineering and design firm structured to adapt quickly and offer clients the most current technology, innovative design solutions and comprehensive project management for turn-key delivery. After laying down roots in North Carolina’s Tech Triangle, Summit has seen an expansion across the Carolina’s and up the east coast, requiring a network built to scale and allowing operations to deliver the innovative solutions clients require.

Challenges

  • Lack of network visibility making troubleshooting network issues time consuming and costly.
  • Siloed and complex network, limiting operations ability to meet growth driven from the business end. 
  • Limited internal network focused resources.

Results

  • Easy access to a granular application monitoring, application prioritization, and circuit performance.
  • State of the art WAN remediation provides access to critical resources regardless of where they live. 
  • Co-managed, holistic approach to the network for a true partnership.


Introduction

Summit Design and Engineering is a firm specializing in architecture, engineering, construction and maintenance management services headquartered in Hillsborough, NC. Beginning with a footprint across North Carolina and Virginia, Summit rapidly began to expand throughout the east coast. After identifying the need for better network performance, Summit resolved to tackle the new and unique challenges that came with a rapidly growing business and the network it relied upon to operate effectively. Doug Edmunds, Director of IT for Summit, engaged their strategic telecommunications solutions provider CNSG who in turn made the introduction to WAN Dynamics, an industry leader in managed SD-WAN and secure network solutions.

When Doug joined Summit Design and Engineering he was charged with strategically positioning the company’s IT environment for growth and creating a high level plan for support. As the company began to grow, the infrastructure in place was not suited for new growth projections nor was it able to support next generation technologies like cloud based file synchronization and storage for other services hosted outside the existing private network. In order for Summit to achieve their ultimate goal of leveraging cloud based solutions, they realized the first step was laying a network foundation to support the technologies that would transform their business.


The first step was migrating to a unified cloud based voice solution that allowed direct dialing to all locations across the organization sourced by CNSG. Step two was then creating greater redundancy and increasing access to reliable connectivity throughout the network. Finally, implementing a network solution which would allow Summit to effectively and reliability reach applications which were increasingly hosted outside their private infrastructure in the cloud.

In addition to simply identifying pain points and creating a wish-list, there was a lack of internal resources that were able to be dedicated to long-term projects and away from daily network operations. Doug and Summit Design and Engineering realized they were looking for a partner in the industry and not just another vendor.

Solution Selection & Implementation: WAN Dynamics and VeloCloud

Doug reached out to Managing Partner at CNSG, Phil Howard, who has been a trusted advisor and resource for years, to assist with guidance on practical first steps towards achieving his vision of a modern network. At this point, Phil made the introduction to WAN Dynamics, an industry leader in helping businesses effectively leverage enterprise technologies such as SD-WAN, cloud applications, network security, and cloud-first voice and data communication integrations. Doug tasked WAN Dynamics with eliminating dependence on network management at the site level and on-premise applications.


With SD-WAN from WAN Dynamics, Summit Design and Engineering was able to migrate its siloed and static network to a dynamic and fully redundant SD-WAN network. Now using a SD-WAN Orchestrator for centralized management, troubleshooting, and provisioning, managed SD-WAN Gateways for secure, reliable performance access to cloud applications to and from all remote sites, and SD-WAN Edge devices deployed at each customer premises, Summit Design and Engineering had a true cloud implementation that supported its current and future initiatives to deliver greater reliability, visibility, and performance to the network.


Network Visibility

Doug was trying to get up to speed on the existing network but realized they did not have a way to quickly view their existing network infrastructure, nor did they have the ability to diagnose problems in the network remotely and efficiently. There was no way to identify network impacting conditions that were affecting his end users’ experience. In order for Summit to build their ideal network, greater visibility and control of their traffic was required.

The new SD-WAN network from WAN Dynamics allowed the capability to monitor overall network health as well as individual sites with extreme granularity and all via a centralized controller securely accessible anywhere in the world. Summit with the help of WAN Dynamics can now quickly diagnose not only outages, but brown out conditions that impact performance like latency, jitter, and packet loss so immediately noticed a difference in their ability to identify and automatically correct deficiencies in the network. In addition to the self-administration control Summit now has, they also have WAN Dynamics co-managed services always include hands-on, expert support from our engineers.

Reliable Cloud Based Services and Applications

In order to unify communications across the network, Summit were looking to implement a variety of cloud based solutions that their current network was unable to support. With Hosted VoIP, and cloud based solutions for file transfer and storage, accounting, payroll, and project management SaaS solutions on the horizon, Summit required a way to reliably connect to critical applications no longer living within their internal network environment.

With a fully managed SD-WAN solution, WAN Dynamics provided Summit with a single solution to solve multiple pain points common to a cloud based environment. While the SD-WAN gateways allow for secure and reliable transport to the front door of their cloud providers, the industry leading dynamic tunnel protocol allows for bandwidth aggregation, sub-second and session redundant failover, and WAN remediation features to overcome packet loss, jitter, and latency in any provider network backbone. In addition, features such as on-demand full mesh VPN configuration and WAN remediation ensure that whether your traffic is destined to your private network or public applications it will be prioritized and protected.


Staff Augmentation Customized Support from WAN Dynamics

When Doug began at Summit Design and Engineering he became one of three people responsible for the entire IT infrastructure, not just the network. In order for Summit Design and Engineering strategically position the company for success without having to hire multiple outside resources to manage their network, they were in need of a true partner to manage their network.

With WAN Dynamics network engineering expertise extending well past just WAN, they were just the right fit to lead the network redesign for Summit Design and Engineering. WAN Dynamic’s comprehensive approach to the network provided the additional resiliency, performance, and standardization required to meet the needs of a growing customer base. Custom built reporting provides Summit with a monthly summary of the performance of their wide area network.

For Summit, WAN Dynamics automated reports detail the most leveraged applications across the network, its top talkers, as well as the highest and lowest performing carriers providing access at the site level. This comprehensive approach has resulted in a significant decrease in network related trouble tickets, and increased network uptime and worker productivity.



“WAN Dynamics in particular, with the services they offer on top of the underlying VeloCloud technology, was really going to be a winning combination for us.”
 
                                                              
- Doug Edmunds, Director of IT | Summit Design and Engineering

| Share: