Henderson Engineers Deploys Silver Peak’s SD-WAN Solutions

By Lee Doyle, Principal Analyst at Doyle Research

Henderson Engineers – a national building systems design firm – is headquartered in Kansas City with offices nationwide.  Henderson employs more than 700 people, has two data centers, and 11 branch offices in the U.S.  Henderson requires a reliable, high performance WAN to connect its remote employees (with their detailed engineering plans) with its data centers. Henderson Engineers’ IT team is actively migrating to the cloud initially deploying Office 365. WAN requirements include support for Henderson Engineers’ CAD/CAM engineering drawings, Windows and Linux client data, and SaaS-based applications traffic traversing its WAN.

After carefully evaluation, Henderson decided to implement a hybrid WAN by adding Internet circuits at remote locations to its existing MPLS-based WAN (sourced from AT&T).   Henderson needed SD-WAN functionality for application performance optimization as well as data center replication and reliability.  Some of its applications, including AutoCAD, also rely on traditional WAN optimization capabilities (e.g. data compression).  Internet circuits are sourced from a variety of suppliers, including Cox, Comcast, Frontier, and CenturyLink.   And, with SD-WAN, Henderson has the option to source its WAN bandwidth from a wide range of service providers.

Benefits of the Silver Peak Solution

Henderson selected the Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect as its SD-WAN solution at its data center and branch locations.  It selected Silver Peak for the robustness of its SD-WAN capabilities including path conditioning and dynamic path control.  To address the WAN optimization requirement, Henderson deployed the integrated Unity Boost WAN optimization option.

Henderson now has the flexibility to use any combination of underlying transport, including business-grade broadband, without compromising application service levels. 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.  Henderson reports that Silver Peak EdgeConnect was easy to deploy with centralized templates and straight forward to manage, using the integrated Unity Orchestrator management software.

 “With Silver Peak, we’re now able to fully utilize 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.”

Henderson is migrating toward business grade dedicated internet access and broadband and will retire its MPLS WAN Services over the next few years.  This will make EdgeConnect their primary WAN gateway across their 14 locations, including their data center and corporate HQ.  Silver Peak allows 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.