Moveero Replaces MPLS, Simplifies Networking and Security with Cato SASE Cloud

The Challenge: Simplify Without Risk

When it comes to secure global WANs, keeping things simple can be as important as performance and reliability–particularly for a small IT team. Simplification was the goal for Dr. Faisal Jaffri, Global IT Director for moveero, a manufacturer of off highway wheels and wheel systems used in agriculture, construction, and material handling.

Shortly after Jaffri came on board, moveero separated from former parent company GKN PLC and divested its Chinese business, leaving seven global locations, including manufacturing plants in Denmark and the UK and product development and testing centers in Italy and USA.

The company’s global network was indeed complex. “We had an MPLS cloud connecting all our sites, with Internet breakouts in the UK and USA and Internet over MPLS In Denmark, says Jaffri. “I was managing five different suppliers just in the UK, eight if you include all the other sites.” There were also firewalls and network optimizers at each site managed by the internal IT team, VPN’s for remote connectivity, and a Web filtering service from a major provider.

“With eight suppliers and all that equipment it was never easy to address problems that came up,” says Jarffri. “Sure, we had MPLS SLAs, but they’re not all that useful when the firewall and network optimization service levels don’t match,” says Jaffri. “We had to do a lot of work to make sure all those service levels came together as one.”

“Sure, we had MPLS SLAs, but they’re not all that useful when the firewall and network optimization service levels don’t match”

Since the Chinese business had been divested, there was ample opportunity for simplification and upgrading. “Our MPLS contract had been active for more than five years without any change in price or technology, which meant we were using old technology with no benefit from downward market pressure on pricing,” says Jaffri.

Jaffri was also looking to relieve the small IT staff of mundane day-to-day management activities so it could focus on projects that would enhance the business. “With all those suppliers, we used to spend two to four hours every month just reviewing performance of each one.”

Moveero Finds Simplicity with Cato

It was time to simplify, upgrade, and reduce costs. Jaffri started investigating SD-WAN and SASE and put out an RFP seeking the functionality and capability he already had but delivered through one supplier at lower cost.

He spoke to several other vendors, but the Cato SASE Cloud was the only one that looked to him like a true cloud architecture. “With the other options we would still have optimization and firewall appliances on site and perhaps one or two services such as Web filtering in the cloud,” says Jaffri. “As far as I was concerned, they were just putting a wrapper around what we already had and managing it for us.”

Jaffri also looked to the future with his team, which was unlikely to grow. “Did I really want all that equipment on site needing to be maintained and supported?”

Inherited security practices from previous ownership at moveero were outdated. “Our firewalls had almost 800 rules to manage,” says Jaffri. “That’s two rules for every person with an email account. We really needed to rationalize that rule set, but I didn’t see that happening with the other providers. Only Cato would manage the firewalls for us and let us start with a clean slate.”

“Our firewalls had almost 800 rules to manage,” says Jaffri. “That’s two rules for every person with an email account. We really needed to rationalize that rule set, but I didn’t see that happening with the other providers. Only Cato would manage the firewalls for us and let us start with a clean slate.”

Cato connects all global enterprise network resources — including branch locations, mobile users, and physical and cloud datacenters — into a single secure, global, cloud-native network service. With all WAN and Internet traffic consolidated in the cloud, Cato applies a suite of robust security services to protect all traffic, including anti-malware, next-generation firewall, content filtering, and IPS.

Connecting a location to Cato is just a matter of installing a simple Cato Socket appliance, which links automatically to the nearest of Cato’s more than 65 globally dispersed Points of Presence (PoPs). At the local PoP, Cato provides an onramp to its global backbone and security services. The backbone is not only privately managed for zero packet loss and 5 9’s uptime; it also has built-in WAN optimization to dramatically improve throughput. Cato monitors network traffic and selects the optimum path for each packet across the Cato backbone. Mobile users run across the same backbone, benefiting from the same optimization features, improving remote access performance.

Cato Simplifies, Delivers, and Cuts Costs

Jaffri decided to run a proof of concept to ensure Cato could deliver on all his requirements. Installing Cato was straightforward. “We dropped a Cato appliance onto each site, connected up the last mile link into the cloud and didn’t have to worry about anything else. If we needed anything, which wasn’t very often, we would just raise a request with Cato and it would be done.

“We ran MPLS parallel to Cato at first, but it wasn’t long before we switched totally to Cato and were able to remove all that equipment,” says Jaffri. “We’ve had Cato for three years and it’s worked very well with almost no required maintenance. I have no complaints about performance.”

“We ran MPLS parallel to Cato at first, but it wasn’t long before we switched totally to Cato and were able to remove all that equipment”

Aside from Cato’s performance and reliability, Jaffri likes Cato’s environmentally friendly architecture. “It’s just two lightweight appliances drawing power rather than all those power-hungry firewalls, network optimizers, and other devices,” says Jaffri.

He also likes the platform’s self-service model. “We raise a request and usually don’t have to wait long for it to get dealt with,” he says. Thanks to Cato’s self -service, local teams can raise their own issues with Cato, rather than having to wait for the moveero central office to do so, as they did with MPLS.

Cato has also allowed the IT team to focus on other issues. “Cato has allowed me to reduce headcount and move our team’s focus to some new thinking that will benefit the business in the long run,” says Jaffri. “Thanks in part to Cato, we can look forward to continuing to evolve the function and greater benefits down the road.”