How Trimark Consolidated Five Vendors, Cut Costs, and Advanced Zero Trust with Cato

Baltimore Aircoil Replaces MPLS with Cato, Improving Voice Quality, Enabling Video Conferencing, and Increasing Agility Summary: Trimark is the largest food service equipment dealer in the United States, serving major brands like Chick-fil-A, 7-eleven, and The Cheesecake Factory. Growth through acquisition had accelerated the company’s reach and, over time, the complexity of its IT environment. When Trimark set out to simplify and modernize, it chose the Cato SASE Platform, replacing five separate firewall vendors with a single converged solution and, for the first time, giving its networking and security teams a unified foundation to work from. Customer Snapshot Industry: Food service equipment and supplies distribution Scope: 52 locations; 3,000 employees Headquarters: Massachusetts, USA Key Results Reduced costs by 35% Replaced five firewall vendors with a single Cato SASE platform Achieved 80% progress toward Zero Trust in three years Challenge Through years of acquisition, Trimark had grown into the largest food service equipment dealer in the country. With that scale came a network infrastructure to match. Across approximately 52 locations, the team was managing five different firewall vendors, MPLS circuits, multiple VPN clients, and a standalone web filtering solution. Each was inherited from a different acquisition and each required its own management and support. The deeper challenge was structural. Each division across the business ran its own networking operation—its own tools, its own vendor relationships, its own way of working. There was no single view of the environment and no shared infrastructure to work from. The goal was to bring networking operations across all divisions under one platform, build a foundation for a stronger partnership between networking and security, and establish the architecture needed to advance Zero Trust. “We had five different firewall vendors across our locations, and none of them were talking to each other. When your tools don’t integrate, you can’t see the full picture—and the gaps you can’t see are exactly where the risk is.” Douglas Arnn, Director of IT Infrastructure, Trimark Why Cato When Trimark evaluated its options, together with its long-time partner Solution Interface, the goal was to reduce the number of vendors and find a platform they could build on. As security requirements evolved, the team didn’t want to solve each new need by adding another tool. They wanted a single architecture where additional security capabilities could be layered in over time, without introducing new vendors, new consoles, or new integrations to manage. The Cato SASE Platform was built for exactly that. Because networking and security are converged natively—SD-WAN, ZTNA, SWG, CASB, DLP, FWaaS, IPS, and XOps all in one platform—Trimark could activate capabilities as their needs evolved without touching a new vendor or standing up a new integration. The global private backbone of 85+ Points of Presence (PoPs) provided reliable, high-performance connectivity across all sites, and the cloud-native architecture meant new locations could be deployed in as little as two days. As the team’s Zero Trust ambitions grew, the platform was already there to support them. “We could have gone for a more expensive, more complex solution that could have done the same thing as Cato. But why?” Douglas Arnn, Director of IT Infrastructure, Trimark Impact The consolidation delivered immediate, measurable results. Monthly spending on network and security infrastructure dropped by approximately 35%, but the more significant story is what Trimark gained in return. Where they once managed five firewalls, they now operate on a fully converged platform for networking and security. Less spend, more capability, and a single platform to manage it all. The platform brought Trimark’s distributed networking operations together under one shared infrastructure. Teams that had been managing separate environments across different divisions could finally work from the same console, the same policies, and the same data, freeing the team to focus on higher-value work for the business. The security team felt the change, too. Unified logging and visibility across the entire environment meant deeper log analysis and a stronger day-to-day partnership with the networking team through a shared foundation for identifying and responding to threats. Network reliability improved significantly. Cato’s global backbone delivers consistent, resilient connectivity across all locations, and the business feels the difference. When something needs attention, the visibility the platform provides means the team can quickly pinpoint the source. It’s the kind of reliability that gets noticed at the board level. Three years in, Trimark is 80% of the way to full Zero Trust. But the bigger picture is what that progress represents: a network fundamentally rearchitected—converged, cloud-native, and built to scale securely alongside the business. The foundation is in place, and so is the platform to build on it. “Today, my team is working from one platform, one console, and one view of the entire environment. We’re 80% of the way to full Zero Trust, costs are down, and instead of managing vendor sprawl, we’re focused on moving the business forward. That’s what Cato made possible.” Douglas Arnn, Director of IT Infrastructure, Trimark

CIAL Dun & Bradstreet Improves Networking and Security in Latin American with Cato Summary: Trimark is the largest food service equipment dealer in the United States, serving major brands like Chick-fil-A, 7-eleven, and The Cheesecake Factory. Growth through acquisition had accelerated the company’s reach and, over time, the complexity of its IT environment. When Trimark set out to simplify and modernize, it chose the Cato SASE Platform, replacing five separate firewall vendors with a single converged solution and, for the first time, giving its networking and security teams a unified foundation to work from. Customer Snapshot Industry: Food service equipment and supplies distribution Scope: 52 locations; 3,000 employees Headquarters: Massachusetts, USA Key Results Reduced costs by 35% Replaced five firewall vendors with a single Cato SASE platform Achieved 80% progress toward Zero Trust in three years Challenge Through years of acquisition, Trimark had grown into the largest food service equipment dealer in the country. With that scale came a network infrastructure to match. Across approximately 52 locations, the team was managing five different firewall vendors, MPLS circuits, multiple VPN clients, and a standalone web filtering solution. Each was inherited from a different acquisition and each required its own management and support. The deeper challenge was structural. Each division across the business ran its own networking operation—its own tools, its own vendor relationships, its own way of working. There was no single view of the environment and no shared infrastructure to work from. The goal was to bring networking operations across all divisions under one platform, build a foundation for a stronger partnership between networking and security, and establish the architecture needed to advance Zero Trust. “We had five different firewall vendors across our locations, and none of them were talking to each other. When your tools don’t integrate, you can’t see the full picture—and the gaps you can’t see are exactly where the risk is.” Douglas Arnn, Director of IT Infrastructure, Trimark Why Cato When Trimark evaluated its options, together with its long-time partner Solution Interface, the goal was to reduce the number of vendors and find a platform they could build on. As security requirements evolved, the team didn’t want to solve each new need by adding another tool. They wanted a single architecture where additional security capabilities could be layered in over time, without introducing new vendors, new consoles, or new integrations to manage. The Cato SASE Platform was built for exactly that. Because networking and security are converged natively—SD-WAN, ZTNA, SWG, CASB, DLP, FWaaS, IPS, and XOps all in one platform—Trimark could activate capabilities as their needs evolved without touching a new vendor or standing up a new integration. The global private backbone of 85+ Points of Presence (PoPs) provided reliable, high-performance connectivity across all sites, and the cloud-native architecture meant new locations could be deployed in as little as two days. As the team’s Zero Trust ambitions grew, the platform was already there to support them. “We could have gone for a more expensive, more complex solution that could have done the same thing as Cato. But why?” Douglas Arnn, Director of IT Infrastructure, Trimark Impact The consolidation delivered immediate, measurable results. Monthly spending on network and security infrastructure dropped by approximately 35%, but the more significant story is what Trimark gained in return. Where they once managed five firewalls, they now operate on a fully converged platform for networking and security. Less spend, more capability, and a single platform to manage it all. The platform brought Trimark’s distributed networking operations together under one shared infrastructure. Teams that had been managing separate environments across different divisions could finally work from the same console, the same policies, and the same data, freeing the team to focus on higher-value work for the business. The security team felt the change, too. Unified logging and visibility across the entire environment meant deeper log analysis and a stronger day-to-day partnership with the networking team through a shared foundation for identifying and responding to threats. Network reliability improved significantly. Cato’s global backbone delivers consistent, resilient connectivity across all locations, and the business feels the difference. When something needs attention, the visibility the platform provides means the team can quickly pinpoint the source. It’s the kind of reliability that gets noticed at the board level. Three years in, Trimark is 80% of the way to full Zero Trust. But the bigger picture is what that progress represents: a network fundamentally rearchitected—converged, cloud-native, and built to scale securely alongside the business. The foundation is in place, and so is the platform to build on it. “Today, my team is working from one platform, one console, and one view of the entire environment. We’re 80% of the way to full Zero Trust, costs are down, and instead of managing vendor sprawl, we’re focused on moving the business forward. That’s what Cato made possible.” Douglas Arnn, Director of IT Infrastructure, Trimark

Diamond Braces Uses Cato to Boost WAN Security, Performance, and Reliability Summary: Trimark is the largest food service equipment dealer in the United States, serving major brands like Chick-fil-A, 7-eleven, and The Cheesecake Factory. Growth through acquisition had accelerated the company’s reach and, over time, the complexity of its IT environment. When Trimark set out to simplify and modernize, it chose the Cato SASE Platform, replacing five separate firewall vendors with a single converged solution and, for the first time, giving its networking and security teams a unified foundation to work from. Customer Snapshot Industry: Food service equipment and supplies distribution Scope: 52 locations; 3,000 employees Headquarters: Massachusetts, USA Key Results Reduced costs by 35% Replaced five firewall vendors with a single Cato SASE platform Achieved 80% progress toward Zero Trust in three years Challenge Through years of acquisition, Trimark had grown into the largest food service equipment dealer in the country. With that scale came a network infrastructure to match. Across approximately 52 locations, the team was managing five different firewall vendors, MPLS circuits, multiple VPN clients, and a standalone web filtering solution. Each was inherited from a different acquisition and each required its own management and support. The deeper challenge was structural. Each division across the business ran its own networking operation—its own tools, its own vendor relationships, its own way of working. There was no single view of the environment and no shared infrastructure to work from. The goal was to bring networking operations across all divisions under one platform, build a foundation for a stronger partnership between networking and security, and establish the architecture needed to advance Zero Trust. “We had five different firewall vendors across our locations, and none of them were talking to each other. When your tools don’t integrate, you can’t see the full picture—and the gaps you can’t see are exactly where the risk is.” Douglas Arnn, Director of IT Infrastructure, Trimark Why Cato When Trimark evaluated its options, together with its long-time partner Solution Interface, the goal was to reduce the number of vendors and find a platform they could build on. As security requirements evolved, the team didn’t want to solve each new need by adding another tool. They wanted a single architecture where additional security capabilities could be layered in over time, without introducing new vendors, new consoles, or new integrations to manage. The Cato SASE Platform was built for exactly that. Because networking and security are converged natively—SD-WAN, ZTNA, SWG, CASB, DLP, FWaaS, IPS, and XOps all in one platform—Trimark could activate capabilities as their needs evolved without touching a new vendor or standing up a new integration. The global private backbone of 85+ Points of Presence (PoPs) provided reliable, high-performance connectivity across all sites, and the cloud-native architecture meant new locations could be deployed in as little as two days. As the team’s Zero Trust ambitions grew, the platform was already there to support them. “We could have gone for a more expensive, more complex solution that could have done the same thing as Cato. But why?” Douglas Arnn, Director of IT Infrastructure, Trimark Impact The consolidation delivered immediate, measurable results. Monthly spending on network and security infrastructure dropped by approximately 35%, but the more significant story is what Trimark gained in return. Where they once managed five firewalls, they now operate on a fully converged platform for networking and security. Less spend, more capability, and a single platform to manage it all. The platform brought Trimark’s distributed networking operations together under one shared infrastructure. Teams that had been managing separate environments across different divisions could finally work from the same console, the same policies, and the same data, freeing the team to focus on higher-value work for the business. The security team felt the change, too. Unified logging and visibility across the entire environment meant deeper log analysis and a stronger day-to-day partnership with the networking team through a shared foundation for identifying and responding to threats. Network reliability improved significantly. Cato’s global backbone delivers consistent, resilient connectivity across all locations, and the business feels the difference. When something needs attention, the visibility the platform provides means the team can quickly pinpoint the source. It’s the kind of reliability that gets noticed at the board level. Three years in, Trimark is 80% of the way to full Zero Trust. But the bigger picture is what that progress represents: a network fundamentally rearchitected—converged, cloud-native, and built to scale securely alongside the business. The foundation is in place, and so is the platform to build on it. “Today, my team is working from one platform, one console, and one view of the entire environment. We’re 80% of the way to full Zero Trust, costs are down, and instead of managing vendor sprawl, we’re focused on moving the business forward. That’s what Cato made possible.” Douglas Arnn, Director of IT Infrastructure, Trimark