Never so many sites been liberated by so few key strokes
Reports say Orange Business Services (OBS) has liberated the global IT estate of manufacturer Siemens by evacuating computers from 1,168 global sites and re-launching them onto a secure software defined wide area network (SD-WAN).
The manufacturer was reportedly bogged down in a legacy that restricted its movements and needing to head off fast moving competitors. Rescuers OBS and its US technology partner Cisco managed to span networks covering 94 countries across every continent.
“Deploying, migrating and implementing this huge digital transformation project for Siemens and managing their critical global communications infrastructure underlines our end-to-end integrator,” said Aliette Mousnier-Lompre, Interim CEO at Orange Business Services.
So far details of the airlift are sketchy but Mobile Europe is planning to include a deeper investigation of the logistics. OBC used its skills in operating a ‘flexible SD-WAN’ system to consolidate the network design, breaking it up into smaller and more modular units of code. Having been detached from their legacy hardware units, the units can be repurposed, replicated then despatched to trouble spots across the globe.
OBS said that since its clean up exercise, operations and maintenance are much more efficient and immediate. Engineering giant Siemens has reported that SD-WAN has simplified the management of complex environments, boosted performance and agility. This is a necessary expedition of networking as Siemens is to move its applications from its own premises and onto data centres. SD-WAN enabled the switch from traditional access via Virtual Private Networks to Internet-based application access.
Hanna Hennig, CIO at Siemens, explained the paradox that simple designs create versatile networks. “The massive deployment of Flexible SD-WAN delivers decisive advantages for our business and users alike,” said Henning, “including a streamlined user experience with dynamic traffic routing for applications as well as dynamic bandwidth allocation.”