Client Success Story: Mission Australia
Better serving the community with cloud services and SD-WAN
Problem situation
Mission Australia is a national organization that seeks to help disadvantaged children and families. Through a collection of government agencies, churches, partners, and funders, Mission Australia collaborates with people experiencing homelessness or disadvantage to tackle the root causes of their challenges by providing access to safe, affordable homes and innovative, evidence-based support services. Its network consists of central corporate offices, state offices, and numerous sites that include childcare facilities, learning facilities, and charity shops located in either big cities or remote locations.
Each of the approximate 200 countrywide sites was connected via MPLS, with very small capacity and low bandwidth, all backhauling to the data center. Redundancy was provided through 4G, with the head office having the highest bandwidth of all locations at just 100MB. The combined need to traverse the entire MPLS network to access and transmit data was both expensive and inefficient. Mission Australia was heavily dependent on its existing service provider to maintain the MPLS and manage performance to meet corporate network demand. However, the existing management functionality provided very little visibility into the network, inhibiting the ability to clearly and quickly identify the root cause of problems and remediate when an issue occurred.
Recognizing that its network was limiting growth and driving up costs, Mission Australia made a strategic decision to transform its network infrastructure. This transformation aimed to better support a shift to cloud applications and significantly increase the bandwidth available to all sites, enabling greater efficiency and scalability for the future.
With plans to move its ERP system to the cloud, and more specifically into Azure and AWS, Mission Australia needed a new, dynamic, and robust system that could provide all users across approximately 200 sites with a standard, high-quality user experience when accessing cloud applications. Additionally, ensuring secure data transfers and maintaining a high quality of service (QoS) was crucial to Mission Australia, especially as content traversing the network was often from and between government agencies and highly confident
“To best serve those that cannot help themselves, our enterprise needs to be fully connected. Connectivity is the backbone of our operations, ensuring that our team, no matter where they are located, can collaborate seamlessly and access the resources they need to make a difference. SD-WAN enables us to bridge the gap between our offices, providing reliable, secure, and high-performance connectivity that supports our mission and allows us to deliver critical services and support that our communities rely on”.
– Chief Information Officer, Peter Smith, Mission Australia.
The solution: The Right SD-WAN
To help evaluate all potential solutions, Mission Australia turned to Coevolve, a global leader and provider of next-generation networking and security solutions. Throughout this evaluation process, Coevolve took the time to fully understand Mission Australia’s needs and challenges. The result was a clear recommendation – a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) platform that would not only meet Mission Australia’s immediate needs but also support its strategic business goals moving forward with greater efficiency and flexibility.
Having established its technology roadmap, Mission Australia and Coevolve turned their attention to selecting the right vendor. Frustrated by inadequate visibility from its existing carrier, Mission Australia was determined to find a vendor who shared a forward-looking vision about SD-WAN adoption and could provide the service it required to support its initiatives.
Following a nine-month evaluation period of various vendors, Mission Australia narrowed down its SD-WAN vendor list to Viptela and VMware SD-WAN™ by VeloCloud®. Ultimately, Mission Australia chose VMware SD-WAN because of its robust platform, security ecosystem, positive reviews, and shared long-term vision for support of evolving technology. Coevolve was chosen as the managed service provider to transition from the legacy MPLS infrastructure to a cutting-edge VMware SD-WAN solution deployed with cloud-delivered security. Today, Coevolve continues to collaborate with Mission Australia, providing end-to-end managed services.
Coevolve and VMware SD-WAN
The entire roll-out of the SD-WAN platform was strategized and implemented by Coevolve. The scope of work included replacing all MPLS circuits and infrastructure across the LAN WAN with VMware SD-WAN. It also included replacing all telephones, switches, and mobile devices with brand-new devices across all sites.
Replacing the MPLS backbone was an entire SD-WAN platform that included:
- VMware SD-WAN Orchestrator in the cloud that centralized the monitoring and management of the entire network from a single pane
- VMware SD-WAN Gateways located near cloud applications that optimized traffic across all available channels and enabled sub-second delivery
- VMware SD-WAN Edges at each branch office that optimize traffic delivery, firewall functionality for security, and routing functionality.
Additionally, Coevolve was able to utilize VMware SD-WAN’s established security ecosystem, deploying integrated security cloud capabilities from Zscaler for content filtering.
The entire SD-WAN deployment process took seven months, with the longest time constraint resulting from delays in obtaining broadband lines from carriers. Deployment was conducted in waves, with high-value sites converted first due to complexity and anticipated cost savings.
As network conversion and deployment continued to smaller branches, learnings obtained from previous locations accelerated the time-to-live process, with seven to 15 sites converting per week. Significant cost savings were realized when deployment reached the 30 microsites in the network as installation of VMware SD-WAN Edges was completed by site-level resources rather than highly skilled technicians. Simplified packages included a VMware SD-WAN Edge with dongles and instructions and required very little time to connect and implement.
“To support this critical mission, Mission Australia requires a robust, cost-effective network solution that can enable frontline workers in highly remote areas. By leveraging next-generation technologies like SD-WAN, cloud security, and a combination of broadband, 4G/5G, and Starlink satellite, Mission Australia can expand its reach to even the most remote communities, empowering its frontline teams and bridging the technology gap in a truly impactful way”.
– Co-Founder and CEO, Tim Sullivan, Coevolve.
Best Cost Strategy: 40% Reduction
SD-WAN is substantially more cost-effective than MPLS due primarily to the cost of bandwidth and network management. With Mission Australia’s focus primarily on serving its community, it ensures that its constituents receive the services they need by pledging to shift as much of its operating capital to funding activities rather than funding a costly network.
SD-WAN enables Mission Australia to leverage a continuous buying strategy to optimize bandwidth costs across various carriers. Using this strategy, Mission Australia (through Coevolve) holds a long-term position with VMware as its SD-WAN vendor and takes a short-term position on circuits by shifting carriers by branch site, depending on the best available price. Mission Australia’s shift to a purely Internet-based SD-WAN and this best-cost bandwidth buying strategy facilitated primarily through Coevolve has reduced its network costs by upwards of 40%.
Smith adds, “As a non-profit, managing costs is a priority, so we’ve traditionally opted for the least expensive connections. However, with VMware SD-WAN and Coevolves co-managed services, we deployed a solution that not only was cost-effective but also offered the guidance and support we needed to manage our network and security more effectively. This partnership has exceeded what we thought was possible and enables us to operate with the performance and reliability of high-end solutions.
Accelerated Application Access
To accelerate transactions and support a true shift to the cloud, Mission Australia moved its ERP system to AWS and Azure. With MPLS, the path to access an IAAS network would have been nearly impossible, but with SD-WAN, the entire organization, regardless of branch location, can access the centralized system quickly, easily, and securely.
Bandwidth Increased by 5x
Mission Australia’s legacy MPLS required that all network traffic backhaul to the primary data center, creating delays in data delivery and increasing the instance of packet drops if connections were unavailable or compromised. With SD-WAN, sites could connect seamlessly and quickly through Internet connections to each other or to cloud-based applications and services. Dynamic multipath optimization (DMPO) enables ideal delivery of all content across all available transport channels. Following the full deployment of SD-WAN, bandwidth increased by five times what was previously available with MPLS.
Network Visibility and Management
With over 200 sites countrywide, management of the MPLS was difficult, complex, and costly. Following the Coevolve-maintained VMware SD-WAN platform, Mission Australia was able to leverage the VMware SD-WAN Orchestrator to centrally manage and monitor all aspects of the network on both the LAN and WAN side, as well as remotely remediate issues without a costly truck roll or highly trained technicians.
Future Outlook
Through Coevolve’s strategic guidance and seamless integration of VMware and Zscaler, Mission Australia achieved remarkable results during its network infrastructure transformation. By replacing legacy infrastructure with a telco-independent SD-WAN solution and integrating Zscaler’s cloud-delivered security.
Sullivan adds, “Coevolve’s dedication to innovation and next-generation solutions has positioned Mission Australia for sustained growth and success. Since the partnership began in 2016, it has thrived, showcasing the value of collaborating with a trusted managed service provider.
Through our co-managed methodology and client-centric approach, we have ensured Mission Australia’s network is not only secure and reliable but also capable of supporting its critical mission, even in the most demanding environments”.
Mission Australia is a national Christian charity motivated by a shared vision of an Australia where everyone has a safe home and can thrive. Since 1859, Mission Australia has been standing alongside people in need across Australia, offering real hope that has a lasting impact. The organization believes a person’s circumstances shouldn’t define their future and that everyone can reach their full potential given the right support.
Industry:
Not-for-Profit
Headquarters:
Sydney, Australia
Results:
- Cost Savings: Achieved significant (over 40%) cost reduction.
- Cloud First Strategy: Expanded availability of cloud services to all sites and enabled direct internet access, supporting the deployment of their Cloud First strategy.
- Improved Network Performance: VeloCloud SD-WAN solution provided a modern, software-defined platform to prioritize critical traffic and combine links in active: active mode, increasing the bandwidth across the network by more than 5x.
- Improved Security Posture: A hardening of network security with integrated Zscaler Cloud Firewall and Zscaler Private Access to simplify and strengthen security posture.
- Support During COVID: Dynamically increased ZPA licensing without any disruption to the users.
- Enhanced Visibility: Improved telemetry and diagnostics online for a transparent service based on one common view across client and managed service provider.
- Improved User Experience: Supported branch sites in regional, remote locations, where underlay infrastructure is limited and of poor quality.
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