Henderson Engineers Retires Traditional WAN Infrastructure; Deploys an Application-Driven WAN Edge Powered by Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect

With an eye to the cloud, engineering company embraces broadband, assures network and application service levels, and dramatically simplifies WAN management

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--()--Silver Peak, the global leader in broadband and hybrid WAN solutions, announced today that Henderson Engineers has successfully rearchitected its WAN, retiring conventional WAN infrastructure, in favor of an application-driven WAN edge powered by the Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution. The results have proven both immediate and compelling for the nationally-recognized engineering company headquartered in Kansas City. Henderson now has the flexibility to use any combination of underlying transport, including business-grade broadband, without compromising application service levels. The company’s IT team has also dramatically simplified its WAN architecture – moving beyond manually-configured, traditional WAN infrastructure to an advanced centrally-orchestrated, application-driven WAN edge.

Achieving Transport and Carrier Diversity

Traditionally, Henderson Engineers relied on local and regional carriers for its private MPLS circuits, but quickly realized that building an application-driven SD-WAN would allow the company to mix and match national carrier WAN services and gain the flexibility to combine MPLS, Switched Ethernet and business-grade broadband connectivity. The deployment of EdgeConnect enables simplified and consistent connectivity that allows Henderson Engineers to ensure network performance and application service levels over any combination of transport, while also providing a future-proof WAN that will scale in line with future business requirements. In addition, by deploying EdgeConnect as its primary WAN gateway at each of its locations, Henderson Engineers can now retire its conventional WAN infrastructure as it completes the transition.

“As a national Top 10 architectural engineering company, keeping our distributed employees connected to applications in accordance with service levels is critical to our ability to harness cross collaboration and effectively address the requirements of our clients,” said John Smock, infrastructure manager at Henderson Engineers. “With Silver Peak, we’re now able to successfully embrace broadband connectivity, assure application service levels, and dramatically simplify the management of our WAN for the near and long-term. The network just works, and that’s great for our employees and great for our business.”

Assuring Application Service Levels over Broadband

Henderson Engineers’ IT team is actively migrating to the cloud across both SaaS and IaaS, initially deploying Office 365 and Microsoft Azure instances. After a thorough evaluation of an incumbent vendor’s SD-WAN offering, it became clear that it lacked the robust features and capabilities needed to support Henderson Engineers’ daily deluge of CAD/CAM engineering drawings, Windows and Linux client data, and SaaS-based applications traffic traversing its WAN. Henderson Engineers ultimately turned to Silver Peak and selected the EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution, based on the maturity and robustness of its advanced features and capabilities including path conditioning and Dynamic Path Control (DPC). To assure network and application service levels across its WAN, the company also required an SD-WAN solution that offered integrated WAN optimization. EdgeConnect addressed this requirement with the integrated Unity Boost WAN optimization software performance pack.

Centralized Orchestration and Management

A key benefit of EdgeConnect for Henderson Engineers is the ability to centrally orchestrate and manage its WAN with Unity Orchestrator, in contrast to having had to manually configure and manage WAN infrastructure at each location. Another key decision criteria for the company was the ability to host Orchestrator locally and offer a full spectrum of ways to talk to, configure, and manage each appliance in accordance to the unique requirements for each location, including whether to apply Boost across application groups. Management and ongoing monitoring with Orchestrator is further simplified using the live view real-time graphical interface.

“Innovative companies like Henderson Engineers are making the transition from conventional WAN infrastructure to an application-driven WAN edge,” said John Vincenzo, senior vice president and CMO, Silver Peak. “EdgeConnect empowers geographically distributed enterprises like Henderson Engineers to achieve carrier and WAN service diversity, assure application service levels over any combination of connectivity and gain the operational efficiencies of centralized orchestration and management.”

About Silver Peak

Silver Peak is the global leader in broadband and hybrid WAN solutions. Silver Peak offers a high-performance SD-WAN solution that provides secure and reliable virtual overlays to connect users to applications with the flexibility to use any combination of underlying transport without compromising application performance. This results in greater business agility and lower costs. More than 3,000 globally distributed enterprises have deployed Silver Peak broadband and hybrid WAN solutions across 80 countries. Learn more at silver-peak.com.

Contacts

Silver Peak
Danielle Ostrovsky, 410-302-9459
dostrovsky@silver-peak.com

Release Summary

Engineering company Henderson Engineers, rearchitected its WAN, deploying an application-driven WAN edge by Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN.

Contacts

Silver Peak
Danielle Ostrovsky, 410-302-9459
dostrovsky@silver-peak.com