ChannelVision Playbook Volume 7

The manufacturing company has more than 1,700 employees and is headquartered out of St. Clair Shores, Mich. In addition to St. Clair Shores, there are three other U.S. locations — Michigan, Indiana and Texas — and five international locations — China, India, Germany, Mexico and Poland. An instance ran in the Azure cloud. The sites in Mexico and Texas were connected via MPLS to the St. Clair Shores headquarters. All locations ex- cept for Texas had direct internet con- nections, secured with local, provider- managed firewalls. Applications included ERP from Plex Systems, Microsoft Of- fice 365, Nasuni for file replication and voice from ShoreTel. Like many companies, Fisher & Company relied on MPLS for its global network. And like many companies, Fisher was tired of the high costs, limited bandwidth and complexities of MPLS services. The company spent $27,000 a month for a managed, se- cure MPLS service. The company’s 10 Mbits/s connection from the U.S. to Mexico alone cost $7,000 per month. And three Riverbed WAN op- timizers meant a one-time outlay of nearly $60,000 with an annual renewal of $7,000. With stacks of appliances, includ- ing firewalls, WAN optimizers and routers, comes complexity and a breeding ground for problems. Making the Case Study F irst, the background: Fisher & Company is the parent company of Fisher Dynamics, a seating-systems and mechanisms company, and Fisher Dynamics Metal Forming, a safety-critical precision metal parts company. Fisher & Company improvesWAN performance, slashes MPLS costs with SD-WAN 12 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK