One of the largest expert growers and suppliers of high-quality fresh vegetables in Europe, Produce World, has deployed the Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) solution to connect employees in its remote branch locations to business applications. Since deploying EdgeConnect, Produce World has increased its available bandwidth more than five-fold. As a dispersed organisation with five production sites spanning the UK – four factory sites and a smaller 10-user site in Scotland – Produce World needed to increase bandwidth to support more advanced video and audio conferencing, as well as business critical applications, including Citrix. With each site running on a combination of asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), fibre lease lines and broadband connections, with multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) back-up links, Produce World wanted a solution that would give it the highest level of visibility and control over its network traffic, while assuring application service level agreements (SLAs) over any combination of transport services. Finally, the company wanted to improve internet connectivity for both staff and visitors.
After assessing the market, Produce World elected to deploy the Silver Peak EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution due to its centralised control, ease of deployment, and its ability to extend application SLAs to its dispersed locations. EdgeConnect automatically reports on traffic across the network, providing valuable visibility, whilst path conditioning ensures the highest level of network and application performance. Since deploying the SD-WAN solution, Produce World is now able to take advantage of five times more available bandwidth than it had previously.
“With several factory sites across the UK, we rely on having the most efficient business processes in place,” said Richard Billington, infrastructure manager at Produce World. “We knew we needed more bandwidth to support data-hungry conferencing applications, such as skype, but our traditional WAN infrastructure was unable to do that, nor provide us with the desired control over our network. Indeed, we wanted to be able to choose where traffic was sent depending on its importance. At the same time, we wanted to offer our employees more reliable Wi-Fi access. Whether it was streaming videos, accessing social media or browsing online, we wanted to support – not define – what our employees can do in the workplace.”
Produce World is using Unity Orchestrator, included with EdgeConnect, which provides unprecedented levels of visibility and control of data centre and cloud applications. It streamlines internal and external business processes from a central command, can assign business intent policies, and monitor real-time throughput.
“The Silver Peak EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution has given us the control that we needed,” continued Billington. “We are now able to decide how and where our applications traffic is delivered, which is enabling us to move away from the traditional MPLS links to more flexible and cost-effective broadband transport technologies. With five times as much available bandwidth, our employees and visitors are now able to access the applications they need, without impacting network performance. We’re extremely happy to continue working with Silver Peak, who have proven a great partner.”
“Produce World serves as another excellent example of how the EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution is addressing key business challenges and making our customer’s businesses more agile and successful than ever before,” said Chris Helfer, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Silver Peak. “The power of EdgeConnect has enabled Produce World to dramatically increase its available bandwidth, which has significantly improved their employee’s user experience and enabled the firm to focus on business-enabling initiatives to propel its business forward.”
