“The wide area network (WAN) was one of the key components in this regard. 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” explains Johan Kok, IT Executive at Bidfood.
This project was focused on upgrading Bidfood’s IT environment by implementing WMware SD-WAN powered by VeloCloud.
First Technology needed to future-proof their operations by transforming Bidfood’s network infrastructure for high availability,scalability, and performance with the migration to a cloud environment. The scalability element was achieved using VeloCloud architecture, which provides direct internet links affording dedicated bandwidth to individual sites while also providing the scalability required to expand as operations grow.
Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, we were able to use VeloCloud’s zero-touch-deployment, which was provided by Redvine enabling the plug-and-play deployment across all Bidfood branches.This project roll-out took an impressive 10 days from start to finish, and has resulted in halving bandwith costs, while increasing capacity 10-fold.
“For us, the seamless failover capabilities provided by VeloCloud and the ability to mix and match connectivity options depending on our needs is enabling us to provide the continuous access, critical for our operations that run around the clock. Once the links were installed at the Bidfood branches, we could easily decommission the legacy system and migrate to the SD-WAN environment,” explains Kok.
It is not just about the technology but having the right people in place to drive it; planning was critical in providing the blueprint to ensure a smooth implementation. Johan Kok explained how lockdown had of course impacted their operations, but they were able to use it as an opportunity to overhaul their critical infrastructure through VeloCloud. Gaining complete visibility and manageability of their networks allows Bidfood to proactively engage with their service providers if the links are not preforming adequately before this escalates into bigger difficulties.
“We not only leveraged our experience on the architecture, but also remotely assisted with its deployment,” explained Morne Vermeulen, Senior Core Engineer at Redvine, “Our status as a VeloCloud MSP enables us to run gateways across Africa to ensure customers like Bidfood get seamless failover across their regional footprint if there are any connectivity issues at their sites. SD-WAN is a business enabler for any organisation and Bidfood is now well positioned to capitalise on this.”
