A national food services distributor future-proofs its always-on network with VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud, rolled out across every branch in just ten days.
Branches across South Africa & Botswana
The challenge
As part of its strategy of migrating to a cloud environment and future-proofing operations, national food services distributor Bidfood set out to transform its network infrastructure for high availability, scalability and performance. Assisted by BUI and VMware partner Redvine Networks, Bidfood needed to upgrade an IT environment that had to reflect the growth of the business.
"The wide area network was one of the key components in this regard," says Johan Kok, IT executive at Bidfood. "With branches in South Africa and Botswana, retaining the existing MPLS infrastructure was becoming cost prohibitive. Furthermore, we needed to upgrade our capacity and gain complete visibility into our WAN environment."
The solution
BUI implemented VMware SD-WAN powered by VeloCloud, whose architecture provides direct internet links, affording dedicated bandwidth to individual sites while also providing the scalability required to expand as operations grow.
According to Vaughan Rutherford, Networking Technical Lead at BUI, the zero-touch deployment of VeloCloud made the project far simpler to complete, essential given that the implementation took place during COVID-19 Level 5 lockdown conditions. "It was a matter of shipping the units to the sites, connecting them to the network, and having them configure themselves once connected to the internet," he says. "It's not just about the technology but having the right people in place to drive it. Planning was critical as this provided the blueprint to ensure a smooth implementation."
The results
The rollout took just 10 days from start to finish. "Even though the lockdown impacted our operations, we used it as an opportunity to overhaul our critical infrastructure through VeloCloud," says Kok. "The solution has halved our bandwidth costs while increasing our capacity 10-fold. It also provides us with complete visibility and manageability of our network, so we can proactively engage with our service providers before issues escalate into significant problems."
The seamless failover capabilities and the ability to mix and match connectivity options now enable Bidfood to provide the continuous access critical for operations that run around the clock.