The disruption of 2020 spurred IT change and modernization in the government sector that would have otherwise taken years or possibly decades to achieve, especially related to networks and applications. A sudden and total shift to remote work sites forced most government agencies to accelerate moving applications to the cloud and rethinking their network architecture for better resiliency, security, scalability, and bandwidth support.
This was the case with one state judicial system that with courtrooms closed needed to hold court online. The State turned to World Wide Technology (WWT) and managed network partner Unitas Global to modernize its network and upgrade its bandwidth across approximately 160 sites including court offices, judges’ offices, and large and small courthouses quickly and cost-effectively.
Prior to the global health crisis, this State was working to roll out new cloud-based apps in judges’ offices like video and its legacy network was struggling to support the increased bandwidth these SaaS applications required. The organization was restricted by existing copper telecom lines, often costing more than broadband internet services with only a fraction of the data-carrying capacity. Organizations are increasingly turning to SD-WAN for their digital initiatives, to optimize SaaS and cloud applications, and to simplify remote location IT deployment and operations.
This State turned to WWT, Unitas, and its SD-WAN partner Cisco to deploy an organization-wide solution. Together they designed a complete approach to SD-WAN that improved operational efficiencies and helped control WAN costs while gaining performance.
The main benefit of SD-WAN is that the network is easily managed from a central controller. Network administrators can build policies and seamlessly push them to every device at once, greatly simplifying IT management. The underlying network can run over different types of technology such as fiber, broadband, and LTE.
For this solution, WWT used Cisco Meraki devices and a managed SD-WAN platform designed for the customers’ cloud- and digital-first imperatives. Unitas Global provided SD-WAN underlay network including broadband, DIA, wireless, and Ethernet P2P. Each site was sized and connected with the ability to fully support day to day judicial work and required applications wherever they were hosted. Unitas Global provides day-to-day monitoring and management of connectivity to all locations, acting as a natural extension of the state judicial system’s IT team, taking full ownership of every case with monitoring policies best fit for their specific needs.
After a year of massive growth and change, government agencies have had no choice but to reevaluate their technology environment and prioritize more flexible networks and applications. With WWT and Unitas Global, this state judicial system is now able to operate from distributed remote locations without any delay in justice.
The organization went from a legacy network with minimal bandwidth to maximized bandwidth, the ability to prioritize critical applications like video for optimal performance, and the ability to have minimal downtime with 24×7 managed services – all at a lower cost structure compared to what they were previously paying.
Unitas Global can help design an optimized WAN with SD-WAN that improves critical application performance and helps control WAN costs. Explore your options with an SD-WAN technology briefing.
To learn more about Unitas and WWT’s joint SD-WAN solution, watch this video or click here.
