Vitec is a leading global provider of premium branded products and solutions to the fast- changing and growing “image capture and content creation” market
Employing around 1,800 people in 11 different countries, Vitec are organised in three Divisions: Imaging Solutions, Production Solutions and Creative Solutions.
Vitec design, manufacture and distribute high-performance products and solutions for customers that include broadcasters, film studios, photographers and enterprises, as well as the increasing number of independent content creators (“ICC”).
The cost of Vitec’s global WAN provision was of primary concern, as well as the reliance on a single global service provider. Vitec had limited visibility of the application traffic over their global WAN and as such, they struggled with the operational burden of managing and troubleshooting their WAN environment.
To augment the performance of critical applications that were experiencing performance issues across the global network, Vitec was presented with two solutions in a traditional WAN setup – either introduce WAN optimisation technology or sign-up for more bandwidth. Vitec saw WAN optimisation as an expensive, legacy technology and they recognised that adding bandwidth wouldn’t necessarily fix their performance issues – their problem was latency not capacity. They faced having to increase their global WAN bandwidth, with no guarantee of improving application performance, while increasing their MPLS cost which was already a concern within the business.
Kerv Connect played the role of an independent advisor, bringing consultative knowledge about competing solutions in the market. Kerv Connect worked with the customer to deliver a multi-vendor global trial involving sites on both sides of the Atlantic, with a view to addressing their application performance. Given Vitec’s requirement for WAN optimisation, Silverpeak stood out as the most appropriate vendor for this use case. The trial with Silverpeak improved transfer time of data over transatlantic links by 75%, using in-line application acceleration.
Following the successful trial, Kerv Connect rolled out the Silverpeak SD-WAN solution to all 17 global sites. Once all sites were deployed, Kerv Connect provided an SD-WAN managed service to the customer, releasing them from day-to-day operational matters.
WAN optimisation sought by the customer.
Centralised control and visibility, now possible with Silverpeak, meant the operational burden of managing their WAN was dramatically reduced.
Coupled with the fact that Kerv Connect provided a managed service, including management of the various in-country service provider, which freed the customer up to tackle other operational challenges.
Vitec was also able to recognise cost savings associated with moving from their expensive global MPLS infrastructure to an internet-only SD-WAN.
In a continued effort to ensure we offer our customers the very best in knowledge and skills, Kerv has acquired Worth Digital.
