Case Study
Invensys APV deploys Allot Bandwidth Management
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Customer overview
The Invensys Group is well known for its expertise in control and automation solutions. Of the six businesses that make up the group one is APV, which supplies process solutions and support services to the food, dairy, beverage and healthcare industries. APV combines expertise in process technology with leading intelligent automation systems and it currently maintains 86 offices in 48 countries worldwide, all enjoying interconnectivity with other Invensys business units.
The Challenge
The Invensys Group had identified a need to enhance security on their WAN and also wanted to find out more about network use and status. Establishing baseline current bandwidth usage on the Group WAN was a key stage of a WAN reorganisation project. The global structure of APV made it the most appropriate Invensys business unit to head what was a challenging international project – one that affected network resources across many different locations.
All Invensys Business Units share a common open infrastructure with firewalls at Internet Access points. The infrastructure is based on IP VPN over MPLS from various providers. APV wanted to monitor and analyse traffic by volume, protocol, application and even user. They needed to see dynamic as well as historical graphs and reports before applying controls to manage traffic.
The Solution
APV had initially approached other vendors and been told that compression was a key feature in a bandwidth management solution. When IP Performance suggested the Allot solution as a more effective and lower cost alternative, Invensys was not familiar with it but agreed to consider it at what was a late stage (trials with a leading competitor were already planned).
An initial presentation took place just two days before signing a contract on the rival system and showed APV what the Allot NetEnforcer could achieve as well as highlighting IP Performance’s experience with similar projects. IP Performance offered evaluation equipment to facilitate comparison between the NetEnforcer and an alternative vendor. A trial deployment of 15 world-wide sites was agreed with IP-Performance and Allot, against only two trial sites agreed by the alternative vendor.
The NetEnforcer trial was a resounding success, proving the NetEnforcer solution’s suitability. It showed that the compression offered by other systems was ineffective in meeting the Invensys objectives. Achieving a wider deployment was significant because it meant that APV was able to enjoy much better visibility of the solution’s capabilities. Allot devices also proved to be more cost effective in terms of both capital and operational expenditure.
The solution deployed was based on the Allot Communications NetEnforcer NE402. It gave Invensys bandwidth management with various levels of shaping – typically 2Mbps, but scaling up through 10Mbps, 45Mbps and 100Mbps units. The solution was rolled out complete with the Allot Communications NetXplorer Centralised Management and Policy Server.
Benefits
IP Performance offered strong support and took time to accommodate the Invensys requirements for the trial and continued implementation. Costs were dramatically lower than rival solutions and APV now has full visibility of the traffic running on their WAN circuits including full control over priorities for different applications, IP addresses and protocols. A straightforward interface gives access to graphical reports which reduces the level of technical expertise required and APV has access to 24x7 technical support.
APV have been able to identify applications that should not have been running across the WAN and take the necessary corrective action. They can now manage overused circuits, track usage, block or limit web streaming and have the granular applications control that the project required.
All APV IT staff worldwide can now log into NetExplorer with different levels of access and control their own NetEnforcer devices without affecting others on the network. The devices were also so simple to use that APV was able to self-install all over the world without external suppliers, dramatically cutting costs.
