Enterprise Customer with Global Footprint: Network Optimization to Support Innovation

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A global company engaged in bustling M&A activity needed to upgrade its outdated network infrastructure to support data-driven R&D and cloud services across its rapidly evolving global footprint. The corporation turned to Burwood Group for its networking and data security expertise to architect a scalable, secure, next-generation network infrastructure. 

The Challenge: Spur Business Agility With Scalable, High-Speed Network Design 

Following a rapid series of acquisitions, the global company was focused on becoming as innovative as possible. Its new CIO wanted to increase agility by creating a high-performance computing environment for data and analytics, and by providing a common core of cloud-enabled services across all its subsidiaries and newly acquired companies. First, however, the company’s legacy network required significant upgrades to increase speed, bandwidth, and security to support the new world of cloud services for over 16,000 knowledge workers.

The Solution: Leverage the Cloud to Enable High-Performance Computing 

Burwood Group was charged with designing a new wide-area network with Internet connectivity, along with a network security solution, to support cloud-enabled working and analytics. 

The first step was to benchmark numerous applications, such as Microsoft Office 365 for mail, Box for file sharing, and Symantec Enterprise Vault for archiving data. Burwood Group recommended and implemented a wholesale upgrade of the Cisco WAN infrastructure, build-out of a global Palo Alto Networks security solution, and integration of Riverbed WAN acceleration software. After migrating the entire network to global carrier NTT Communications, Burwood Group collaborated with the in-house team to migrate desktop office applications and manufacturing analytics to cloud-based services. 

Throughout, Burwood Group served as program and project manager reporting to the CIO, managing the smooth implementation of new services and IT infrastructure upgrades across the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. 

The Outcome: IT that Supports Innovation and Agility 

With Burwood Group’s expertise and project leadership, the enterprise is smoothly migrating applications to the cloud and has dramatically increased its ability to perform near real-time manufacturing analytics. These improvements have freed up internal resources, increasing business agility and allowing the organization to intensify its focus on innovation. The new network supports cloud-enabled essential services, such as Microsoft Office 365, along with big data collection and analytics to inform R&D and new product launches. Now, Burwood Group is helping the company rebuild its unified communications environment, consolidate several data centers, integrate IT into the construction of two new facilities, and redesign its high-performance computing environment. With the network upgrade complete, the organization is positioned for industry dominance with the agile, cloud and big-data-friendly network it needs. 

Burwood Group Services

  • Project Leadership

  • Program and Project Management

  • Network Engineering

  • Network Security

  • Technology Strategy