Integra streamlines global connectivity and advances its cloud strategy with Aruba EdgeConnect

Regenerative technologies innovator Integra LifeSciences relies on its global wide area network (WAN) for efficiently developing the highest-quality medical products. When its legacy WAN optimization solution grew insufficient for new demands, the company needed to change course.

"Having enough bandwidth was a struggle, especially as we began adopting more cloud applications," explains James Heyburn, Manager of Network Engineering. He determined it was time to take a fresh look at networking infrastructure options.

Aruba SD-WAN Platform Answers the Call

As a respected enabler of positive patient outcomes, Integra LifeSciences connects offices, R&D facilities, and manufacturing plants worldwide to enable the design and production of a broad portfolio of leading medical technologies. Employees across multiple continents need to access various on-premise and cloud-based applications, as well as transfer large files, across Integra's expansive WAN.

To obtain stable, high-performance connectivity for smooth collaborations among its more than 3,000 employees, Integra decided to move away from its legacy solution when the maintenance contract was due to expire by embracing a modern software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) approach.

After an intensive evaluation, Integra selected Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN, the self-driving SD-WAN platform by Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. "EdgeConnect gave us a unified platform," Heyburn says. "It also provided the flexibility to deploy WAN optimization, which was our most immediate need, and then transition to SD-WAN when we were ready."

Accelerating Applications, Lowering Costs and Enabling SASE

In addition to the native networking capabilities within the EdgeConnect platform, Integra is using Aruba Orchestrator, for centralized SD-WAN management, and Aruba Boost WAN Optimization, for accelerating applications and maximizing available bandwidth.

Choosing EdgeConnect set Integra on a path to eliminate legacy WAN hardware, along with the associated complexity and significant management costs. It also permitted advancing its cloud strategy without bandwidth constraints.

Deploying EdgeConnect also supplied Integra with the foundation for a secure access service edge (SASE) architecture, which leads to significantly improved protection for users and assets.

Full platform rollout follows initial Boost deployment

Integra began its SD-WAN journey by using Boost to optimize traffic on its existing WAN, resulting in significantly accelerated traffic and improved application performance.

Satisfied with Boost, Integra then decommissioned its legacy WAN optimization solution and rolled out the entire EdgeConnect SD-WAN platform worldwide, initially bonding MPLS and internet circuits to maximize available bandwidth from Integra's existing network infrastructure

Looking ahead, the EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform positions Integra to take greater advantage of the economic and bandwidth advantages of broadband as MPLS contracts expire.

Eventually, the company also plans to retire hardware-based routers and firewalls at its branches in favor of deploying EdgeConnect's resident, software-based routing and security capabilities. This helps automate SD-WAN administration by enabling Integra's IT staff to address evolving business initiatives with a few clicks, further reducing licensing, upgrade, and management costs.

Advanced Tools and Analytics Increase Productivity

Today, Integra uses EdgeConnect's many intelligence capabilities to improve application performance and network stability as it continues expanding its cloud adoption. These include path conditioning, quality of service (QoS) and dynamic path control.

Granular insights enable data-driven decision making

Another management plus is Orchestrator's policy-based business intent overlay capability. Essentially, the overlays automatically prioritize traffic to eliminate bottlenecks and optimize the requirements of every application, which contributes to enhanced user experiences and productivity.

"Orchestrator allows us to configure overlays in one place and then push them out to all our sites, so we have uniform configurations across the SD-WAN," Heyburn says.

"Overlays are a real time-saver over manual programming," he adds. "They're also an important building block for further improving SD-WAN automation.

In addition, Integra leverages Orchestrator's advanced data and analytics capabilities for data-driven decision making. "We use Orchestrator extensively for gathering information on SD-WAN activity," says Heyburn. "For example, we obtain statistics on data flow, which we can analyze to plan future network requirements."

Advanced data handling supports R&D and manufacturing

To put innovative products in the hands of busy clinicians, Integra relies on a wide range of business and technical applications. These include enterprise resource planning (ERP), computer-aided design (CAD), and cloud-based collaboration tools such as Microsoft 365 and Salesforce, all of which its new SD-WAN helps support.

Boost's data compression and deduplication innovations are critical for significantly improving the performance of these, and other, Integra business applications, as well as speeding the transfer of the large files ubiquitous in today's digital manufacturing environment.

Automation and Granular Insights Enhance Continuity

Yet another EdgeConnect plus is automated failover, which deliver sub-millisecond failover between Integra's primary and backup circuits.

Prior to EdgeConnect, router-based failover techniques caused one or two minutes of downtime each time a circuit experienced an outage—a frustrating annoyance to business users in the middle of a big project. Now, such bottlenecks are a thing of the past.

"With EdgeConnect, traffic flows instantly from one circuit to the other when one of the underlying links drops," Heyburn says. "Users don't notice anything."

Rapidly resolving outage and stability issues

What's more, EdgeConnect also detects circuit outages instantly, for faster troubleshooting, and provides visibility for holding telecommunications providers responsible for any downtime.

"Receiving outage information quickly ensures we can address issues more rapidly," says Heyburn "And, if we have persistent stability problems with a particular connection, that insight gives us better leverage with the provider."

Up to 75% Bandwidth Gain Powers Business Success

Since implementing the EdgeConnect platform, Integra has realized significant increases in bandwidth, ranging from 50 to 75%. This jump delivers business users higher application performance across the board.

Further, EdgeConnect's intelligence capabilities free IT staff to focus on higher-value initiatives, such as supporting an M&A strategy. By enabling companies like Integra to quickly acquire medical technology innovations, they can deliver new healthcare solutions that improve patient outcomes.

Bottom line: Higher bandwidth, lower cost

Overall, the rewards from Integra's SD-WAN all lead to considerable experience, productivity, and profitability gains while substantially reducing IT overhead. Moving forward, EdgeConnect will continue supporting Integra's cloud transformation.

"Bottom line, EdgeConnect has enabled us to obtain higher bandwidth at lower cost than MPLS," Heyburn says. "This results in providing the superior experiences to our end users."