Achieving an A昀昀ordable, Converged Global Network Don Williams Corporate IT Director Innovex Downhole Solutions is a worldwide leader in helping companies drill for oil more efficiently. Secure Global Network Challenges Innovex’s global network had 20+ locations within North America and one in Saudi Arabia. A managed MPLS service connected nine locations, and an Internet-based VPN connected 16 additional locations with a stand-alone site in Saudi Arabia. A centralized, network-based firewall provided Internet access to the MPLS-connected sites. Complexity Cost Some Innovex sites relied on Internet- Global MPLS connections are extremely based VPNs and others on MPLS. expensive. Innovex considered a global, independent backbone provider, but the “ solution lacked the necessary security and We wanted something that could be proved far more expensive than Cato. rolled out in hours and days not weeks and months. On this, we were tired of “ dealing with big telecom. They were about three-to-four We wanted the ability to see the times the cost of Cato.” environment with a click-of-a-button and without deploying a lot of hardware infrastructure. When you integrate with third-party tools, you find vendors often get into a finger pointing contest when something goes wrong. I wanted to avoid all of that.” Innovex Evaluates Alternative SD-WAN Solutions Before Cato, Innovex evaluated various SD-WAN solutions, but they lacked the necessary security and proved far more expensive than Cato. As for appliances, a well-known provider quoted him an SD- WAN and security appliance-based solution that over its lifecycle would have cost five- to six-times more than Cato. “It’s like a printer vendor,” he says. “They discount the hardware but then get you on the maintenance — and the maintenance never ends.” He also didn’t like the cross-domain vendor lock-in. “I was told that I’d have to upgrade my networking equipment in order to use my VoIP phone,” he says, “I would never tie myself to a vendor in that way.” An SD-WAN appliance vendor with built-in WAN optimization lacked the necessary security services. “They didn’t have a complete solution to our problem. Web monitoring and Web filtering meant having to integrate third-party tools,” he says. “I wanted one solution that I could plug-in and send to a branch.” The convergence of functions makes an enormous difference, particularly when looking at branch offices. Eventually, he tried implementing an SD-WAN appliance. They claimed to do all the stu昀昀 Cato could do, but after two-and-a- “ half months of going back to their programmers they were unable to get a meshed network to work.” The Network for Whatever’s Next 5 Manufacturing Case Studies 7