Healthcare monitoring service provider

A leading UK-wide healthcare monitoring service delivering remote video and audio monitoring services focused on safeguarding individuals in health and social care across the UK while improving service transparency and care quality.

Dependable and high-quality upload/download links are essential to supporting their real-time streaming delivery.

Problem

The customer had already benefitted from key connection upgrades (both Leased Lines & FTTC) but needed additional bandwidth between their head office and a client site. In addition, they were suffering from poor connectivity due to constant VPN dropouts, having already maximised their existing connectivity capacity.

Requirements

Combining and aggregating the current FTTC circuits with a second FTTC to meet the desired capacity. A request was also made regarding SD-WAN, which would be used to replace the traditional VPN architecture, enabling a more reliable, scalable, flexible, and manageable solution.

An SD-WAN solution was designed and implemented to deliver additional bandwidth, quality and reliability whilst eliminating dropouts on the VPN.

Solution Approach

Tapping into our partner's Evolving Networks Intelligent Network Fabric (INF), the team was able to combine the bandwidth of multiple diverse circuits to deliver an enhanced resilience and Quality of Service (QoS) with native monitoring and self-healing technology as standard.

Because the INF can run over existing circuits of any type, implementation came down to ensuring each of the sites encountering problems had access to an Evolving Networks EVX appliance while guaranteeing the customer's own clients also had the appliances available remotely by configuring them for SD-WAN provision, thus replacing the unreliable VPN at all the client's sites.

Working with the customer's IT teams, using existing connectivity and initially working alongside the VPN at a nominated test site allowed for a full understanding of the SD-WAN. Successfully migrating one site allowed the remaining sites to be switched over one by one in a detailed and planned rollout before the VPN was eliminated for good.

The design and implementation of the SD-WAN solution has delivered additional bandwidth, quality and reliability while eliminating the dropouts that were being experienced. As a result, the troublesome legacy VPN was replaced by a bespoke SD-WAN. At the same time, a temporary Multipath Ethernet connection was installed at a further site that allowed delivery of essential connectivity until the leased line became available and was integrated into the SD-WAN.

The key impact has been reduced configuration times, improved performance, and reliability to remote sites, as well as the facilitation of a new 1,500 camera rollout across a key health service provider's group of sites.

Connectivity faults have dropped as the intelligent SD-WAN dynamically re-routes traffic and self-heals almost all issues before the customer knows a problem is forming. In addition, the solution is highly resilient, secure and seamlessly scalable, which also supports the company's ambitious growth plans. Requests to adjust capacity by adding or removing tail circuits can be completed in minutes with ease; by comparison, changes to MPLS connections can typically take months.

The SD-WAN was designed and deployed to the exact customer requirements, addressing all technical and operational challenges raised. It is substantially more reliable and much easier to manage, freeing up the customer’s IT team resources to work on other mission-critical matters.

"A resilient SD-WAN has enabled us to scale our business to a point that would not have been achievable without huge financial in-house investment in hardware and recruitment of network engineers. We are now supporting high-risk individuals in high-profile health facilities across the country." IT Director

*Owing to the sensitive nature of our client's work, we cannot include the company name or stakeholder details within this case study.