Top 10 UK accountancy firm deploys advanced Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution to support global, cloud-based IT environment
London, UK – June 27, 2018 – Silver Peak®, the global leader in broadband and hybrid WAN solutions, today announced that one of the top 10 accountancy firms in the UK, Mazars, has successfully deployed the Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect™ software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) solution to connect users at its international branch offices to cloud-based applications. Since deploying SD-WAN, Mazars UK has reduced bandwidth traffic by more than 40 percent at each site and benefitted from substantial cost-savings.
As a UK firm with a global footprint, Mazars UK runs multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) circuits from its data centre located at its headquarters in Tower Hill, London, to its sixteen UK offices and five international offices supporting 2,200 employees. When the company opened its international branch sites in Sydney, Delhi and New York, Quality of Service (QoS) across its existing MPLS WAN architecture impaired the performance of its cloud-based applications, including Citrix for printing, and Skype for video and voice calls.
As a result, Mazars UK sought an SD-WAN solution that would allow it to leverage a hybrid WAN approach, where lower cost, higher bandwidth broadband services could be used to complement MPLS and to eliminate the need to backhaul all application traffic to its central site. Starting with its Sydney office, Mazars is reducing its dependence on international MPLS lines by migrating to local internet breakout. This will deliver secure, direct branch to cloud application access and provide the highest levels of application performance.
Mazars UK turned to Silver Peak Summit partner, Solar Communications, for a solution that would support its digital transformation initiative. Solar proposed the Silver Peak EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution to enable more granular control of their WAN, delivering increased availability and improved application performance, while also enabling Mazars UK to leverage existing network investments to reduce overall WAN cost. Mazars deployed EdgeConnect hardware appliances across its international sites in Delhi, Sydney, Toronto, and New York, as well as in its UK sites, due to the need for high-performance and reliability.
“The existing WAN infrastructure was designed to support our UK operation however, it was starting to creak and was certainly not capable of supporting us internationally,” said David Bennett, chief technology officer (CTO) at Mazars UK. “With the introduction of a range of new cloud-based solutions, we knew that we needed to change our underlying infrastructure to support all our offices – and critical to that was a transport agnostic SD-WAN solution.”
Mazars UK is making use of Unity Orchestrator™ global management software for unprecedented visibility and control of data centre and cloud-based applications. Its unique ability to centrally assign business intent policies to secure and control all application traffic will help the company achieve its future mission of embracing a fully cloud-based environment using Microsoft Azure and Office 365.
“Silver Peak has become a fundamental part of our infrastructure,” concluded Bennett. “Building our global IT infrastructure from the ground up, we would not have been able to provide predictable levels of service to our users without the Silver Peak SD-WAN solution. What’s more, the implementation was pain-free and as we look to move toward a fully cloud-based environment, Silver Peak will help us to manage that transition – and our costs. We knew Silver Peak was reliable through previous work and that it does exactly what it says on the tin.”
“The innovative ways enterprises are going about transforming their businesses are very impactful. This is particularly evident for IT departments as they increasingly migrate workloads to the cloud to enhance business agility,” said Kristian Thyregod, vice president of EMEA sales at Silver Peak. “We are delighted that Mazars is able to embrace the cloud now and in the future, without compromising network or application performance and availability.”
About Mazars
Mazars is an international, integrated and independent organisation, specialising in audit, accountancy, advisory, tax and legal services. As of 1st January 2018, Mazars and its correspondents operate throughout 102 countries and territories, of which 86 are part of Mazars’ international integrated partnership and 16 are Mazars correspondent firms and representative offices. The Praxity Alliance offers Mazars operating capacity via professional teams in 21 additional countries. Mazars draws upon the expertise of 20,000 women and men led by 980 partners working from 300 offices worldwide. We assist clients of all sizes, from SMEs to midcaps and global players as well as start-ups and public organisations, at every stage of their development. In the UK, Mazars has approximately 140 partners and over 1,700 employees, and is ranked one of the top 10 firms nationally.
About Solar Communications
Solar Communications is a leading Silver Peak Summit partner, headquartered in the UK, providing leading edge communication solutions to UK Headquartered mid-market Enterprises. With over 30 years’ experience in the industry, Solar is one of the UK’s leading providers of emerging, disruptive and best-of-breed cloud communications and technology solutions and services that enhance business agility, giving our customers significant competitive advantage and enabling them to respond more effectively to evolving business needs. Built upon a foundation of strong technical expertise, we have developed strategic partnerships with visionary or leading vendors in their given market sectors, taking Silver Peak as a prime example, which truly set us apart from our competition.