Case Studies
Here are a few SD-WAN case studies and other recent examples of where Blaze has designed, built and managed secure networks, software-defined WANs, cybersecurity, cloud, and managed services for our customers.
If you would like more details on any of these SD-WAN examples or to discuss other ways in which we have helped improve our customers IT and network infrastructure as a SD-WAN Managed Services Provider, we would be delighted to discuss this with you.
Routes Healthcare
What they do
Routes Healthcare offers complex care packages for people with long-term health conditions and end of life care in the north of England. Health and Social Care services are provided in people’s own homes and communities, 365 days a year by over 1,000 staff, leveraging 18 service centres and a large recruitment and training hub in Rochdale.
“Blaze has designed and implemented a successful migration from our previous MPLS network to a new SD-WAN infrastructure, improving security and enabling greater flexibility for our IT services across many remote locations and mobile workers.
“Blaze has proven highly responsive to our needs. Delivering a flexible and easy to adapt network, their entire team’s responsiveness and customer-focus makes Blaze very easy to work with.”
Head of IT, Routes Healthcare
The challenge
Routes Healthcare needed to update its IT infrastructure to better enable change and growth in the organisation, to counter the general increase in cybersecurity threats, and to support the increased use of SaaS platforms and cloud services.
Because of the nature of the services which Routes’ carers provide, considerable importance is placed on the confidentiality of customer information, so comprehensive cybersecurity was a key requirement (Blaze Networks has been certified as Exceeding NHS Digital’s DSTP requirements and is ISO 27001 certified).
The solution
Blaze provided a more secure infrastructure which has an enhanced level of cybersecurity and automation, able to keep pace with emerging threats and AI-driven attacks.
Provision of services to remote locations and mobile workers has been made much easier and a secure, capable, and resilient remote access infrastructure has been provided.
Cybersecurity has been enhanced by the network design and by a UTM system providing antivirus, content filtering, multi-factor authentication, and web filtering.
The unified security and SD-WAN technology stack covers all firewalls, switches, and wireless infrastructure, tightly integrated across all Routes Healthcare sites. Professional project management by Blaze ensured a smooth deployment across all locations.
Routes Healthcare has been able to improve the reliability and effectiveness of its wide area network whilst boosting cybersecurity and simplifying operations.
Agrovista
What they do
Agrovista is a leading supplier of agronomy advice, seed, crop protection products and precision farming services to farmers across the UK, and working in partnership with arable, fruit, vegetable, horticultural and amenity sectors. The company operates predominantly in rural or remote locations with dozens of distribution centres and many remote workers.
Blaze Networks have provided Agrovista with a co-managed private network, incorporating Fortinet’s SD-WAN technology and Security Fabric platform. A fully integrated technology stack has been provided, covering firewalls, switches, and wireless infrastructure across Agrovista’s office and depot locations. Professional project management by Blaze ensured a smooth deployment across all Agrovista sites.
“Blaze has provided a flexible and easy to adapt network, and their responsiveness and customer-focus makes the company very easy to work with.
“I’d personally like to thank the team at Blaze Networks for the smooth transition from our previous MPLS provider, and the reliable service they are providing us.”
Senior IT Manager | Agrovista
The challenge
Agrovista needed a company-wide private network with reliable and secure connectivity.
Of particular importance was the need to better support a largely mobile and remote workforce with a secure VPN and improved endpoint security, as was the need to work with a managed service provider able to respond quickly to changing needs. Overall, Agrovista’s existing MPLS network and existing service provider was struggling to deliver – and a more solid foundation for future network evolution was needed to support the business.
The solution
A co-managed private network was created based on Fortinet’s SD-WAN technology and Security Fabric platform. A fully integrated technology stack has been provided, covering firewalls, switches, and wireless infrastructure across Agrovista’s office and depot locations. Professional project management by Blaze ensured a smooth deployment across all Agrovista sites.
All Agrovista locations are directly connected back to Blaze Networks’ secure Private Core Network, with limited traffic going over the public internet. In some cases, alternative internet providers like StarLink were used to provide better internet access at Rural locations. SDWAN technology and security allowed Blaze to deploy and secure these connections with ease.
Rainbows Children’s Hospice
What they do
Rainbows provides care and support for children, young people and families living with serious and terminal illnesses during their short lives.
“Blaze has created a high-availability SD-WAN network and WiFi infrastructure which greatly assists nurses and care staff to look after the children. Blaze “gets” and delivers on how important IT services are to the children’s care and is highly responsive to our needs.
“The improvements Blaze have made mean our teams aren’t busy dealing with IT issues anymore. Instead, they can concentrate on providing the vital care and support that our families need, when they need it the most.”
Director of Business Resources, Rainbows Children’s Hospice
The challenge
Improvements were needed in the quality and availability of digital connectivity and IT services used across the hospice, at shop locations, and for mobile staff. For example, nursing and care staff needed more reliable connectivity and access to care regime and clinical information, particularly during patient handovers (while at bedside and out in the community), and broadband access needed to be improved for children’s enrichment activities and for family members.
The solution
A fully managed private network was created (based on Blaze Networks’ Fortinet SD-WAN offering, together with Fortinet’s Security Fabric platform) providing a fully integrated technology stack covering firewalls, switches, and wireless infrastructure across the Hospice and their retail locations.
This provided a solid foundation so that Blaze could then look to migrate workloads from aging on-premises server infrastructure to Blaze Networks’ Azure stack HCI offering (Blaze Cloud).
As part of the project, Blaze continues to digitally evolve the hospice with modern Microsoft Cloud technology (including applications such as Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive).
The use of SD-WAN technology enhances the Microsoft 365 implementation by adding advanced visibility and awareness of applications traffic across the network.
Linen Mill Studios
Game of Thrones
Studio Tour
What they do
Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge, NI, is home to the ‘Game of Thrones Studio Tour’ and is the location where approximately 30% of the series was filmed.
The Studio Tour is a world-class attraction which enables visitors to peek behind the scenes to discover all the elements that went into bringing the epic world of Game of Thrones to life.
Blaze Networks has designed, delivered, and now manages a high-availability SD-WAN network with Blaze Cloud hosting for Linen Mill Studios’ Game of Thrones Studio Tour. This helps underpin a great visitor attraction for the Studio Tour’s large number of daily visitors. We have been impressed with the Blaze team’s dedication to understand and respond to our needs as they evolve, and in the quality of the network provided
IT Support Manager, Game of Thrones Studio Tour, Linen Mill Studios
The challenge
Linen Mill Studios needed to deliver a visitor experience to live up to visitor expectations for the Game of Thrones Studio Tour. This included enabling large numbers of visitors to individually engage with network-enabled services (in part, through their smartphones), providing ticketing systems and Point of Sale services with flawless access to cloud-based systems, and supporting many discrete systems with dependable and high-performance connectivity.
The solution
A fully managed private network and private cloud hosting network was created (based on Fortinet SD-WAN and Security Fabric platforms). This was designed, implemented, and is fully supported by Blaze.
In addition to the SD-WAN and security infrastructure, key elements of the solution include Wireless Infrastructure across the site including Fortinet Next Generation WiFi 6-enabled Access Points, FortiGuard Unified Threat Management (UTM) security, Blaze superfast gigabit internet connections, and the Blaze Cloud high-availability, secure hosting platform for ticketing and infrastructure systems with Blaze Vault for secure cloud backup and rapid recovery services.
The Fallibroome Trust
What they do
The Fallibroome Trust operates 7 Primary and 3 Secondary academies in Cheshire. Its academies have a combined student capacity of 5,800, with a total of over 700 staff. Fallibroome Academy is the largest of these with over 1,500 students, followed by Winsford Academy with just under 1,000 pupils.
The Trust IT Team provides IT services as part of the central services offering, delivering a central IT service desk function across all 10 Trust schools.
We were impressed with the technical expertise of Blaze, and the ease in which we were able to seamlessly migrate critical systems into Blaze Cloud with minimal downtime to our schools. The SD-WAN has been a significant advancement for our infrastructure with improved performance and reliability over previous site connectivity. The ability to quickly provision new sites or services will be a major benefit for the Trust.
IT Manager | The Fallibroome Trust
The challenge
For historic reasons the individual schools ran their own separate IT infrastructures. Each had their own firewalls and servers of varied makes and technologies, there was no Trust-wide Wide Area Network, private network technology was not being used, and various schools’ infrastructure was approaching refresh.
A fresh approach to the delivery of IT and Network infrastructure was required. This needed to address the individual requirements of each school, be more reliable, cost-effective, simpler and easier to manage. It also needed to be more agile and responsive to changing requirements.
The solution
For historic reasons the individual schools ran their own separate IT infrastructures. Each had their own firewalls and servers of varied makes and technologies, there was no Trust-wide Wide Area Network, private network technology was not being used, and various schools’ infrastructure was approaching refresh.
A fresh approach to the delivery of IT and Network infrastructure was required. This needed to address the individual requirements of each school, be more reliable, cost-effective, simpler and easier to manage. It also needed to be more agile and responsive to changing requirements.
Creation of a central network to which all schools can connect. This included centralising firewalls and next generation security, the creation of central Microsoft services, leveraging Active Directory, and introduction of private fibre optic leased lines into each school.
Deployment of a software-defined network (SD-WAN) and the Fortinet Security Fabric, incorporating next-generation network analytics and management (FortiAnalyzer) and FortiClient Enterprise Management Server (FortiClient EMS) which is a security management solution that enables scalable and centralized management of multiple endpoints.
Migration of all servers to the secure, high-availability Blaze Cloud hosting platform.
By implementing a secure, private network based on SD-WAN and moving to cloud hosting the Fallibroome Trust has achieved significant economies of scale, in part derived from enabling the central IT function to have much improved visibility and control across its IT and network estate.
Hollywood Bowl
What they do
Hollywood Bowl is the UK’s largest ten-pin bowling operator in the UK. The business has 61 ten-pin bowling entertainment centres throughout the country under the Hollywood Bowl and AMF brands, as well as 3 mini-golf centres operating under the Puttstars brand.
The company is operationally dependent on data networking, and a wide area network has been built up over the years as the company has grown.
Delivering the very best customer experience is Hollywood Bowl’s passion, so it is vitally important to the business that all systems within the bowling centres, together with vital centrally-operated systems, deliver the highest standard of customer service to Hollywood Bowl’s customers.
Hollywood Bowl Group have worked with Blaze for over 8 years and they have provided all of our networking requirements, as well as many other services. They are one of our most trusted providers with excellent consultancy and support. When we required a full review of our network infrastructure, Blaze were at the forefront of the decision making.
We required a network which would give us a robust and resilient architecture but also provided the required security layers – as well as future proofing the estate and removing end of life solutions.
We are delighted to have a future-proof, robust and resilient network with an SD-WAN infrastructure, supported by a highly skilled and forward thinking partner. We continue to grow our business and we can do so in the knowledge that we have a secure and fast, resilient network, which will support the business growth and our IT and Digital strategy.
IT Director | Hollywood Bowl Group
The challenge
Hollywood Bowl’s network was nearing the end of its life cycle. Complexity in the setup was very apparent with technologies like access control lists (ACL’s) causing the business to have a lack of flexibility. In addition to aging technology, multiple technology manufacturers had been used over the years – leading to a disjointed infrastructure that lacked overall visibility, control, and compliance for the business. There were also challenges being encountered as the bowling centres digitally evolved and became more dependent on cloud services.
Hollywood Bowl needed to be agile and react to new requirements as the business continued to evolve. This included having complete visibility and central orchestration over the network whilst protecting the entire attack surface.
The solution
Blaze Networks recommended the introduction of a SD-WAN architecture – specifically the deployment of Fortinet’s FortiGate and SD-Branch platforms.
The SD-WAN solution was tailor-designed by Blaze to meet Hollywood Bowl’s requirements. Central to this is the introduction of a single-pane-of-glass solution: this gives the network management team full visibility across the network and greatly simplifies control and the introduction of changes across the network (including the ability to deliver business objects on the fly in minutes, avoiding laborious hands-on configuration of branch equipment that previously required extensive planning).
A network refresh, implementing Blaze Private SD-WAN, has future-proofed the business.
The SD-WAN solution is enabling Hollywood Bowl’s technology evolution and business objectives to be achieved faster. A more secure infrastructure has been delivered, and network connection and dependability has been increased, with an effective doubling of bandwidth through introduction of Active/Active paths and next generation fibre connectivity.
In brief, Hollywood Bowl has been able to reduce the complexity of its network, with all technical challenges and impediments to delivering business change that this complexity caused, while significantly increasing the security of its systems.
Associated Independent Stores (AIS)
What they do
Associated Independent Stores (AIS) is the largest, independent, non-food buying group of its kind in the UK and Ireland. In addition to its core function as a buying group, AIS has a conference and exhibition centre, Cranmore Park, next to its headquarters in Solihull.
The technology and support from Blaze have both been excellent, helping us to achieve and maintain superior levels of security and connectivity. They have made very complex technology seem simple, which is testament to their expert IT knowledge and experience.
IT Infrastructure & Service Desk Manager | Associated Independent Stores
The challenge
AIS needed a new security layer as their current ‘edge security’ technology was due for renewal. They also needed to upgrade their internet connectivity links into their main Solihull HQ. AIS required two separate circuits providing a full N+1 redundant solution. The circuits had to automatically fail over with no drop outs and no human intervention.
The solution
AIS now has a fully resilient network with advanced security features and capabilities of Fortinet firewall technology, without requiring a costly Checkpoint subscription renewal.
The solution includes gigabit dual internet lines to two separate carriers (Vodafone and Virgin), so they have true independent carrier resilience. The secure Gigabit-capable dual line internet connectivity is hosted on Blaze’s MPLS network, Blaze Cloud, and the Cisco switches are configured to create a robust solution with full resilience.
There is automatic failover between the two carriers before they hit a SD-WAN layer, and AIS can survive either a carrier going down or a hardware failover. Unlike most failover solutions Blaze also failover the public IP address space between the two carriers, so that no human intervention is required should a failure of one national carrier or physical hardware failure onsite occur.
The network redesign supports new Unified Threat Management technologies. AIS now has a full Unified Threat Management subscription configured on their environment, including anti-virus, intrusion prevention, application control, content filtering, botnet detection and sandboxing.
Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership
What they do
Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) is a private sector-led, publicly funded organisation that is essentially an economic facilitator which ensures that public sector funding is used appropriately in the local region. They work on a wide variety of ventures including large infrastructure projects and incorporate Marketing Cheshire, which promotes the area to visitors and businesses, as well as the Visitor Information Centre in Chester.
I am entirely happy with Ben and his team – they were really aware of and sensitive to the human aspect of the project. The ongoing weekly meetings are very valuable, discussing not just technical, but cultural issues. The LEP made the investment, with the intention of maximising the efficiencies that it can bring, with links to other applications, as appropriate. It’s done a lot for user adoption, despite the change. You always have champions and strugglers, but the feedback has been really positive, which is a huge compliment to Blaze.
Finance and Commercial Director | Cheshire and Warrington LEP
The challenge
The LEP has grown rapidly as an entity in the last couple of years, from a small strategic unit, to one which now runs numerous development programmes and has in total about 30 staff, along with the “Marketing Cheshire” team, which has another 10 to 15 staff. The LEP’s legacy infrastructure was ageing which was causing capacity and continuity issues. The infrastructure was on site, with no segregation and no failover options. In addition, the staff head count has increased in the past two years and there was insufficient internal resource to properly induct them in the technology.
The legacy networks of the LEP’s three locations were set up as completely separate tenants, making it impossible for the different groups to share things like call routing, central identity management, file sharing and application access.
The solution
Blaze delivered a comprehensive, multi-layered solution, the first step being to build an SD-WAN network using Fortinet technology that provides the ability to identify and route applications based on the business needs. Once the network infrastructure was consolidated, the server infrastructure for all three entities was also consolidated and migrated to Blaze Cloud for central hosting. This included all files, authentication and line of business applications (such as Sage financial system).
Unified threat management (UTM) was provided to protect the entire attack surface. This is monitored with the Blaze Network security information and event management platform and service.
Three separate Microsoft 365 organisational tenants were also consolidated into one share tenancy enhancing communication sharing and collaboration, and the business’ Mitel Unified Communications platform was also moved from on-premises into Blaze Cloud to provide a single unified communication platform across all three locations -addressing all telephony requirements.
Finally, a BlazeVault backup solution utilising Veeam technology provides business continuity and disaster recovery services for all information stored within the organisation.
The results have been good: SD-WAN has created seamless communication across all three sites prioritising application traffic flows and voice. Future-proofed, scalable and resilient infrastructure is now in place, enabling the LEP to improve productivity, and cost savings have been made on voice communications, infrastructure IT support and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Blaze Networks now provides a single point of contact for support, acting as a completely outsourced IT department.
Colchester Zoo
What they do
Colchester Zoo is home to 220 animal species set in 60 acres of parkland and lakes. Their mission is to provide a first-class experience for all visitors, as well as growing the visitors’ understanding and respect for animals.
We now have full redundancy and multiple failover protection on our core network infrastructure, thanks to Blaze. We are also benefiting from fast and efficient internet connectivity and greater storage capacity. The Zoo has been brought up to speed with modern technology and is secure and resilient.
Business Development Manager | Colchester Zoo
The challenge
An entire infrastructure refresh (including replacement of existing on-premise servers) and a new ticketing system, all to be hosted in the cloud. Server replacement was driven by a need for more storage, greater security and resilience. The work needed to be completed during a COVID-19 lockdown.
The solution
Blaze delivered Colchester Zoo an entire infrastructure refresh (including replacement of existing on-premise servers) and a new ticketing system, all hosted in the cloud.
The delivered solution included use of Blaze Cloud for hosting services, implementation of SD-WAN (employing Fortinet technology), provision of fibre optic leased line (with automatic fail-over to a wireless link), VoIP, UTM and other layered security measures.
Colchester Zoo now has full redundancy and multiple failover protection on their core network infrastructure, while also benefiting from fast and efficient internet connectivity and greater storage capacity. The Zoo has been brought up to speed with modern technology and is secure and resilient.
Partners
We partner with leading manufacturers like Microsoft, Fortinet, Veeam, Bitdefender, Cisco, Lenovo and other industry-leaders.
In doing so, Blaze have access to a vast array of products that allow us to overcome our customers’ business challenges and requirements.
Microsoft
Blaze is a Microsoft Solutions Partner and Tier 1 Microsoft CSP Partner. We specialise in Microsoft 365 (including Teams and Teams Phone System), in Microsoft On-Premise and Hosted / Cloud Infrastructure (including Azure), and enable businesses to continue their digital evolution by fully exploiting the latest capabilities of Microsoft products as they evolve.
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Modern Work, Blaze has demonstrated a broad capability to help customers boost productivity and make the shift to hybrid work using Microsoft 365.
Fortinet
Blaze is an Expert Partner of Fortinet, a global industry leader in the supply of secure networking infrastructure systems. Fortinet are our technology partner of choice when building customer-specific Private SD-WANs, and Blaze is one of only a handful of Fortinet SD-WAN Specialization Partners in the UK and a Fortinet top-level Expert Partner. Blaze is also a Fortinet-accredited Managed Secure Solutions Provider (MSSP) and Integrator Fortinet partner. A Leader in several of Gartner’s Magic Quadrants, the Fortinet platform combines excellent performance with advanced security features, superb manageability, and excellent Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) per Mbps.
Veeam
Veeam is a highly respected leader in cloud-based backup and recovery software, data protection and advanced monitoring in the data centre.
Blaze is a Veeam Cloud and Service Provider Silver Partner and we have combined Veeam technology with our highly secure Blaze Cloud™ infrastructure to produce BlazeVault™, a highly dependable, secure, and resource-efficient solution which will keep downtime to an absolute minimum in the event of data loss in operational systems or ransomware attack.
Bitdefender
Blaze is a Bitdefender Gold MSP Partner. Bitdefender is a global cybersecurity leader protecting over 500 million systems through OEM technology partnerships, including with many global IT companies. Tests show it is unmatched in Attack Prevention. Based on Bitdefender technology, Blaze Endpoint Protection hardens endpoints to prevent malware and malicious attacks, and it provides the investigation and remediation capabilities needed to dynamically respond to security incidents when they evade protection controls. Blaze Managed EDR keeps your organisation safe with 24×7 security monitoring, advanced attack prevention, detection and remediation.
Cisco
Cisco has long been the world’s pre-eminent network systems vendor, particularly for technology used at the core of major corporate networks and the internet. In addition to using Cisco equipment within our customers’ private networks, Blaze incorporates Cisco technology into the heart of our own network operations; the Blaze Private Core Network is built utilising Enterprise-class CISCO core routing equipment.
Do you want to Improve Security and Reduce Cost?