C&S optimizes efficiency and productivity of grocery supply chain with business-driven Aruba SD-WAN

美国各地的杂货店依靠C＆S批发杂货店来优化供应，以确保新鲜度和可用性满足消费者需求。因此，当其基于传统MPLS的广阔区域网络经历了不可预测的停机时期时，C＆S正在寻找更可靠的网络解决方案。

Leonard Bernstein, senior director of infrastructure and service delivery for C&S, explains, “The market has changed so dramatically that every second of downtime causes risk to our customers. Volume is growing, and customers need real-time information. We can no longer sustain a circuit outage of any length.”

对数据驱动的需求WAN转换

对于美国杂货店和超市，保留货架库存，并装满合适的水果和蔬菜的农产品区比拥有充分供应的仓库所需的要多。它需要数据。这正是C＆S批发杂货店所提供的。

Founded in 1918, C&S has a storied history of innovation in the grocery supply industry, and today is an industry leader in business intelligence and automation. To help its customers know exactly what products to order, and when, C&S relies on sophisticated data analytics applications running in two east-coast data centers connected to 60 warehouses across its WAN.

C&S relied primarily on MPLS, with backup to dedicated internet access (DIA) links, and in some cases 4G LTE. However, these backup circuits stood mostly idle, limiting their value. Worse, failing over network circuits was a tedious, manual effort that often disrupted access to vital grocery supply data.

Improving Network Resilience and Efficiency

To improve both resilience and efficiency of the network, Bernstein saw SD-WAN as the right solution.

“Our big challenge was to make better use of existing circuits,” Bernstein notes. “We wanted to remove the human element and automate more, leveraging intelligence to elevate network services and seamlessly deal with circuit faults without impacting customers. This all pointed to SD-WAN.”

After evaluating several SD-WAN vendors, Bernstein and vice president of infrastructure, Philippe Bourdon, selected theAruba EdgeConnect Enterprisefrom Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. Key to this decision was an in-depth return on investment (ROI) analysis conducted by Aruba.

The ROI analysis quantified the dramatic positive impact of an SD-WAN built on the EdgeConnect platform. For example, by reducing dependence on MPLS, maximizing bandwidth utilization, and improving network resilience, the ROI analysis projected annual savings in telecommunication expenses of up to 60 percent.

EdgeConnect Platform Optimizes Network Resources

C＆S将EdgeConnect平台部署在其两个数据中心中，并将其推广到所有60个仓库。现在，在部署EdgeConnect的地方，C＆S同时智能使用所有可用电路，优化网络弹性和性能，并最大程度地利用其在运输技术上的投资价值。

Additionally, Bernstein and his team implemented the optionalAruba BoostWAN optimization, available on the EdgeConnect platform, to efficiently handle file transfers and reduce bandwidth consumption through deduplication and compression.

Meets business and application SLAs

为了满足应用程序绩效目标和业务服务级协议，伯恩斯坦和他的团队使用该公司建立了特定公司的应用程序叠加层Aruba Orchestrator管理控制台。每个覆盖层可确保根据业务优先级确保特定的应用程序类所需的网络资源。

For example, to assure end users of getting the highest quality of experience for voice and video calls, the cloud-based RingCentral application is classified as “Real Time” to give it top priority on the SD-WAN. Mainframe applications, Citrix services, and other mission-critical applications are classified as “Critical,” while applications such as Microsoft Office 365 are classified as “Low.“

SD-WAN, routing, and security on a unified platform

Aruba EdgeConnect provides SD-WAN, routing interoperability, and stateful zone-based firewall in a centrally managed platform, allowing C&S to consolidate the WAN edge, retiring its traditional routers and firewalls.

Bernstein says, “Our legacy hardware lacked the intelligence for any sophisticated routing. We’d have to create elaborate scripts to do the kind of routing EdgeConnect does out of the box.”

The built-in routing intelligence and security in EdgeConnect means that C&S warehouses can now break out locally to trusted SaaS and cloud applications instead of backhauling to the data centers as in the past. C&S also takes advantage of the strong integration between EdgeConnect and Zscaler cloud-delivered security services to apply additional inspection of internet-destined traffic.

Enables Strategic Cloud Initiatives

The performance, reliability, and security of the Aruba SD-WAN proved instrumental in enabling C&S to adopt cloud solutions like RingCentral, as well as a growing number of SaaS applications, including Microsoft Office 365.

Bernstein explains, “We wanted to collapse six disparate phone systems and various collaboration apps into a unified cloud solution, but we needed a network that could support it. EdgeConnect not only brought the SD-WAN capabilities to enable our cloud strategy, but also provides strong integration with RingCentral, which solidified our decision.”

Higher team productivity and service quality

With reliable, high-performance network access to applications and grocery supply data across the business, C&S enables its teams to work more productively and deliver the highest quality of service to customers.

实际上，由于最佳利用了所有可用的带宽和高级SD-WAN功能，例如路径调理和动态路径控制，C＆S计算了访问云和数据中心应用程序的用户的性能提高60％。

Provides an Enhanced Work Experience

Another prime benefit for C&S is increased WAN uptime and resilience. With an SD-WAN built on EdgeConnect, circuit brownouts or outages no longer disrupt productivity or customer services.

“Our approach is to implement three different types of technology and use SD-WAN to achieve a multiplier effect on our investments,” Bernstein says. “EdgeConnect provides the intelligence to aggregate bandwidth across MPLS, DIA, and 4G LTE. SD-WAN handles 4G LTE just fine. And we’ve also seen the SD-WAN automatically self-heal when issues happen on the MPLS or DIA circuits.”

Bernstein adds, “We’ve taken the warehouses from suboptimal performance to an enhanced work experience, providing employees more efficient access to applications in the data center and the cloud.”

Biggest business impact is happier customers

最终，智能，高效的SD-WAN对此意味着什么，而C＆S是一家业务？对于伯恩斯坦及其部门而言，随着工程资源能力的提高，SD-WAN的好处恢复了。

“Instead of working on an outage at a warehouse, or trying to figure out why a route to a certain path is not working, my engineers are now available to focus on projects that are more strategic to the business,” Bernstein says.

他总结说：“对业务的最大影响是更快乐的客户。员工并没有每天处理问题，例如登录缓慢或互联网连接不佳，而是能够为我们的客户提供最佳服务。”