Download Strong Customer Success 20161212

Case Study: Reseller
10 Minutes from
deployment to identifying
network dropout cause and
applying traffic shaping
policy
About Strong Solutions
Strong Solutions’ goal is to ensure that their customers have a great user experience on their
journey to the cloud. A key to making this journey a success is having a quality network.
Based out of Sydney but with national and international clients, Strong Solutions are specialists in
cloud and infrastructure design, deployment and managed services. They enjoy deep
relationships with partners such as Telstra and adopt a multi-cloud approach including Telstra,
Azure, AWS and Softlayer.
In Brief
Challenges
• Frequent network dropouts
at key client with 15 sites
• Core applications such as
ERP and Office 365 were
being impacted
• Traditional tools taking too
long to provide insights
• Poor customer experience
with business productivity
being impacted
Challenge: Identify the cause of network
dropouts, stop the finger pointing and deliver
a great customer experience
A key client with 15 locations across the East coast of
Australia had begun their journey to the cloud with
Office 365 through Telstra and connectivity via the
Telstra Next IP network. Despite the high quality of the
network, the client was experiencing occasional
network dropouts, with 2-3 calls per week from the
Head Office alone. Even with close co-operation from
Telstra it could take hours to get results from network
accounting and although this was detailed, it was not at
the application level and did not provide the insights
required. This meant that the dropouts had often
It’s about time network visibility and control
was made this simple.
Benefits
• Ease and speed of
deployment
• Central and granular,
application visibility of
network traffic
• Rapid identification of
network dropout causes
• Centralised real-time traffic
shaping
• No more network quality
incidents raised
“resolved” themselves before detailed analysis and a fix
could take place. The lack of resolution resulted in end
user frustration, recurring service tickets and the
understandable finger pointing.
Solution: Instant application level insights with
centralised shaping makes network quality
calls a thing of the past
The Account Executive at Telstra suggested Strong
Solutions speak to the team at Sinefa, as the Sinefa
solution is complimentary to the existing solutions Telstra
offers.
A free trial probe was ordered and after initial internal
testing, the probe was deployed at the client’s head
office. Within 10 minutes, Strong Solutions was able to
identify the underlying cause as uncontrolled device
updates e.g. Windows and iOS and a policy to shape
the traffic was applied. A key step in the process was
the ability to tag all “software update” applications and
then apply a single shaping rule across those
applications.
Network quality related calls from the head office have
reduced from 2-3 calls per week to none and the finger
pointing has stopped. The end user was able to
evaluate the benefit of the Sinefa trial at no cost, and
once they had seen the benefit were able to roll out
across the 15 site WAN in less than two weeks.
Sinefa also highlighted that the way the Telstra Next IP
network was being used was causing the performance
issues, the network itself was not the problem.
The Future: Sinefa helps to remove pot holes
on the cloud freeway
The basic requirement of an MSP is to deliver a quality
service; without this it’s impossible to deliver other
services. Strong Solutions now has the tools to identify
and fix networking issues, often proactively, resulting in
a better user experience and lower support costs.
“Network dropouts at a key client
were impacting core business
applications and we were not
delivering on our promise of a
great user experience.
Our partners at Telstra suggested
looking at Sinefa. We created a
free trial account and within within
10 minutes of deploying a probe,
we had indentified the underlying
cause (device updates) and
applied a policy to shape that
traffic.
We have gone from 2-3 network
quality calls per week from the
head office to zero. The client is
now enjoying the user experience
we strive for, and the relationship
between the client, Strong
Solutions and Telstra has been
enhanced.”
Kelvin Hay
Director
Strong Solutions
strongsolutions.com.au
Sinefa is a Melbourne based software company founded in 2011 and is helping to
transform performance of data networks across the world. Sinefa provides visibility
and control for data networks. It allows network managers to see all the
applications, users, devices, and links on the network, and to easily redirect
bandwidth to critical applications. Increased network performance boosts
productivity, eases user frustration and reduces network management costs. Sinefa
is the simplest solution on the market, providing immediate total visibility and
control that saves users and managers time
Start your free 14-day trial today by visiting sinefa.com