GTT Communications’ SD-WAN efforts continue to resonate with more large business customers looking to gain greater efficiencies and cost reductions that legacy services like MPLS can't provide.
The service provider completed a successful migration for HMY Group – upgrading legacy network technology to managed SD-WAN without disrupting its business.
GTT's Managed SD-WAN solution connects 15 HMY Group sites across Europe, Asia, and North and South America in real time. It provides what GTT claims is a faster, more reliable network to support the company’s continuing global expansion.
Positioned for growth
HMY saw immediate benefits from switching to SD-WAN.
By migrating from MPLS to SD-WAN, HMY reduced its cost per site by 22% without any service interruptions. Also, the SD-WAN’s central traffic routing features enable the HMY Group to prioritize business applications and optimize data routing to make its operations more efficient and increase its return on investment.
“GTT’s Tier 1 global managed SD-WAN positions our growth company and delivers on this key business objective,” said Teresa Tomás, CIO of HMY Group. “Like our clients in the retail sector, we operate across several continents, and we need to move fast when we add a new site to our network. GTT’s managed SD-WAN solution makes our company more agile so that we can start conducting business in new locations much more efficiently.”
While more large enterprises like HMY are adopting SD-WAN, it appears the segment is moving through a time of transition.
Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group, noted in the research firm's Mid-2023 U.S. Carrier Managed SD-WAN LEADERBOARD that during the first half of this year, “supply chain improvements led to fulfilling a large backlog of SD-WAN orders.”
However, he added, "As the number and size of customer networks grow, service providers are experiencing unanticipated challenges such as network complexity, vendor interoperability, and customer education.”
Access, service diversity
The SD-WAN solution is built on GTT’s global Tier 1 IP backbone, which spans six continents and 140 countries. HMY Group can leverage the SD-WAN solution to more rapidly onboard new sites onto its corporate network in hard-to-reach geographic locations like China and South America, where local access options may not be well established. This is achieved by enabling the HMY Group to leverage any available local access type in a resilient configuration.
GTT Managed SD-WAN now connects 15 HMY Group sites in France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, United States, and China, with efficient routing and load balancing for fast performance and automatic network failover for increased resilience. GTT Cloud Connect gives users across HMY Group high-performance, secure connectivity to the Microsoft Azure cloud.
Also, the HMY Group takes advantage of GTT’s EtherVision, a web-based customer portal, providing its IT team visibility of the entire global network with the ability to set policies and monitor the use and performance of devices and applications.
GTT supported HMY Group throughout the migration with additional solutions, including professional services, SIP trunking, broadband wireless, and centralized firewalls, which GTT also manages as part of its integrated managed services offering.
“The partnership we have built with the HMY Group has been key to developing this secure and reliable network, helping the company expand its business in the fast-moving world of retail manufacturing while allowing its teams around the globe to work efficiently,” said Tom Homer, President, Europe Division for GTT.