SD-WAN helps keep Irish woodlands under control

Coillte Forest has a big job: manage and ensure the sustainable development and use of more than seven percent of land across Ireland. The state agency relies heavily on technology to do this, and expects it to perform. When its traditional network infrastructure began to falter, Coillte’s IT team saw the forest through the trees and knew it was time for an upgrade. And it turned to Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS) and its partner, Edge7 Networks, for help in making it.

“We need excellent communications and connectivity to support our services,” said Marc Walsh, ICT Enterprise Architect, Coillte. “And this can be a challenge as many of our sites are located in remote locations where bandwidth is low, inadequate and unreliable.”

Building a Modern Network

Coillte operates 35 sites that include offices, nurseries, and sawmill weighbridges. To overcome the obstacles it faced in connecting them, Coillte set to work building a modern network infrastructure that would allow it to provide seamless, secure internet access across its sites and substantially improve its network performance and resilience in an efficient and cost-effective manner. And it chose Citrix SD-WAN as the foundation.

Scaling to Meet Business Needs

By aggregating multiple circuits across copper, fiber, and 4G/5G, Citrix SD-WAN delivers the capacity and performance capabilities required to serve up the tools employees need to get work done – even in the most remote locations. Using the solution, Coillte can:

• Flex network bandwidth up or down

• Aggregate different services and providers to deliver burst capability

• Choose the best connectivity for each site from any provider in the area

• Provide offices with local internet breakout so staff enjoy the best possible performance whether using private or public cloud apps

• Connect to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops™ to ensure users have a consistent and secure experience on any device, from any location, no matter the app

“Based on its ability to optimize low-bandwidth solutions and aggregate with other connectivity such as 4G, we knew Citrix SD-WAN would allow us to get adequate bandwidth to Coillte’s remote locations to meet their needs,” said Ronan Murray, Director, Edge7 Networks.

Enhancing Employee Experience and Productivity

And in doing so, it has enhanced the user experience and boosted employee productivity.

“Previously, staff could only use core business apps,” said Coillte Technical Services Manager, Paul McGrath. “Now, they have the capacity and performance capabilities to use unified communications and collaborate via video with Microsoft Teams, which they couldn’t do before, and this has made a real, positive difference for both our users and business operations.”