Back to Case studyCelebi Aviation, Offering Airport Ground Handling Services Connects its Geographically Dispersed Indian Offices using TTBS SD-WAN iFLX
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Headquartered in Turkey, the private company began operations in 1958 with airport ground handling services. Thereafter, it added ancillary services to the bouquet of offerings and is now considered among the most successful enterprises providing integrated solutions to the civil aviation industry.
The equipment and services supplied include ramps, cargo handling systems, warehouse management services, bridge operations, trucking, airport lounge management services and general aviation solutions.
After entering India through a joint venture, the company has been providing ground handling services and ancillary setups at ten airports including Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad.
To connect the employees and their applications, the company was using a common network and needed software defined WAN (SD-WAN) service. The IT managers had chosen the technology to retain centralised control and get visibility into the entire network. They contacted Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) to get a trusted connectivity solution. Our reliable uptime guaranteed by end-to-end service level agreement (SLA) and network encryption on public and private data services were the key reasons to get SD-WAN iFLX from TTBS.
Business Challenges
The organisation sought a virtual WAN architecture on which it could utilise any mix of data services – such as broadband, Wi-Fi and LTE - allowing the workforce to connect securely to enterprise applications.
IThe IT managers did not want to use the traditional approach of backhauling traffic from different branches to the main data centre for security inspection because it wasted considerable bandwidth. The usage of this methodology also caused more latency, affecting the performance of the applications.
What the company needed was a solution that could enable traffic movement directly over the internet to trusted cloud-based apps while ensuring compliance with IT and business policies.
The top priorities while opting for a business-driven WAN configuration were:
- Ability to identify application traffic and enforce Quality of Service (QoS) for digital processes as per business requirements
- Automatic failover capabilities during sudden downtime to avoid any interruption in workflows
- To ensure that the traffic between websites and WAN always moved securely and was separated from the risks of public internet connections
The company also wanted to minimise its IT overheads and keep the network costeffective and scalable. It was looking for an experienced vendor to manage the service comprehensively and provide quick troubleshooting support as and when required.
TTBS Solution
Our solution architect connected eight work locations for the customer on a private network configured for high availability. Keeping in view the data services involved, we used MPLS for Delhi and Mumbai, while for the other regions our team deployed SD-WAN iFLX solution. The firewalls used with these services were also managed by TTBS.
As against traditional WAN models, the SD-WAN infrastructure was designed to offer full support to apps hosted in public or private clouds, SaaS platforms such as AWS and Microsoft Azure, and in on-premises data centres. We configured it with adequate bandwidth to deliver high levels of app performance.
The network setup also met the IT managers’ expectations specified upfront:
- SD-WAN iFLX processed traffic by order of significance and QoS as per business needs and the technology could leverage physical and cloud systems to centrally manage app policies and threads across WAN branches.
- We provided two links at each location for redundancy benefit – if one path failed or underperformed, it could dynamically route the traffic to the other link without causing any disruption in the functioning of applications.
- SD-WAN technology made the company's online network more secure with its use of IPsec protocols, VPN tunnels, next-generation firewalls, and microsegmentation of traffic - the network admins could keep these security elements coordinated centrally while also getting a comprehensive overview of applications' performance.
The deployment of TTBS SD-WAN iFLX helped the company reduce its network management and scaling costs. It eliminated the need to purchase expensive hardware to keep locations connected. And, thanks to its in-built security attributes, the organisation could do away with the outdated security systems that weren't effective in guarding against sophisticated cyber threats.
As per the SLA terms TTBS provides a managed service with high uptime and active troubleshooting support for resilient digital operations.
Benefits
- Improvement in business continuity with SLA-backed network uptime and backup links to maintain smooth traffic flow
- Lower IT overheads with no need for frequent replacement of networking components
- High network security enabled by cloud web content filtering, malware defence and robust encryption capabilities
- Rapid provisioning cycles to add new locations for corporate network expansion without long lead times
- Streamlined WAN management through a single interface offering granular visibility and application performance reports
