Nationwide labor and employment law firm raises the bar for network performance and security with Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform

When it comes to handling complex legal matters involving employment and labor, companies put their trust in Fisher Phillips. As leading specialists in labor, employment, civil rights, employee benefits, and immigration law, the firm prides itself on delivering excellence in client services. So when an unreliable network threatened the quality of those services, Fisher Phillips took action.

Imagine the frustration of having a video conference drop in the middle of a client discussion, or being unable to access critical documents because the network is down. Michael Steele, director of technology at Fisher Phillips, witnessed it firsthand. “We constantly had network problems that impacted the level of service to clients,” he recalls.

SD-WAN Offers Greater Resiliency and Performance

Steele was dealing with a managed WAN using low-bandwidth MPLS circuits to connect the firm’s nationwide offices to its centralized private cloud and a handful of trusted SaaS applications. However, he says, “Those MPLS connections were not reliable.”

Steele knew about SD-WAN from industry news and events, and he saw it as a way to improve the resiliency and performance of the firm’s network. His vision was to use multiple, higher-bandwidth broadband connections at each location instead of MPLS. But the solution needed to be secure, and easy to deploy and manage.

After evaluating a number of vendors, Steele narrowed the field to Aruba (formerly Silver Peak) and VMware (formerly VeloCloud). Working with Aruba partner Veristor, Steele ultimately selected the Aruba EdgeConnect Enterprise platform, a self-driving SD-WAN by Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. Steele says, “Security, availability, performance, and ease of management were all critical to us, and we saw that in EdgeConnect.”

Ease of Deployment Speeds Opening New Offices

Over a three-month period, Steele and the SD-WAN teams deployed EdgeConnect across Fisher Phillips’s 37 offices and one data center, all in redundant configurations for high availability. Moreover, the SD-WAN implementation occurred simultaneously with installation of new broadband circuits to replace MPLS and while deploying a new cloud-based VoIP system.

“Our SD-WAN deployment went very smoothly,” Steele notes. “It speaks to the ease of the EdgeConnect platform that we could deploy nearly 80 appliances, plus an entirely new edge network, in that short amount of time.”

Steele says the ease of deploying EdgeConnect and moving to all broadband will also help accelerate opening new locations. Instead of taking months to have new MPLS circuits provisioned, he can now bring a new office online quickly. “We added a new office and data center this year. Each already had internet connections in place so those locations were online in one day.”

Simplifying the WAN Edge for Greater Efficiency

With the EdgeConnect platform, Steele was able to simplify the edge footprint by retiring traditional routers and using the routing interoperability provided within EdgeConnect. Then, using the Aruba Orchestrator management console, he created business intent overlays for different classes of applications to automatically guarantee each class the required network resources based on business priority.

For example, applications such as e-discovery and knowledge management are classified as critical, while the new cloud-based phone and video conferencing system is classified as real-time, and other SaaS applications such as Microsoft 365 and cloud-based document management are classified as trusted.

Now, with each Fisher Phillips location having high-availability EdgeConnect appliances, dual-bonded broadband circuits with sub-millisecond failover, and optimized traffic routing, downtime due to circuit outages or brownouts is history.

Improving reliability, performance, and security

Additionally, by enabling office locations to break out locally and securely to the VoIP service and SaaS applications through the stateful zone-based firewall in EdgeConnect, Steele says application performance and end-user quality of experience have improved.

“Other SD-WAN solutions wanted to backhaul traffic through a separate security service, which adds latency and additional points of failure,” Steele points out. “Cloud-based phone systems require priority, and they need a direct connection. Our ability to send that traffic straight to the phone provider improves our voice capabilities and ensures the highest quality of experience for our attorneys and clients.”

Steele also used the zone-based firewall to segment guest Wi-Fi traffic, creating a separate VLAN to keep guest internet traffic securely segmented from all other business traffic. General internet and other business traffic for the firm is routed through next-generation firewalls at regional security centers across the country.

Provides Deep Visibility Into Application Traffic

As the person responsible for the network, Steele especially values the efficiencies he’s gained in IT. Having Orchestrator provides a centralized vantage point from which to manage the nationwide SD-WAN, push out updates, and troubleshoot issues when they arise. One of the most important things that brings Steele is greater visibility for his network team.

Steele says, “Not only does Orchestrator make it easy to manage all the EdgeConnect appliances LAN-to-WAN-to-LAN across almost 40 locations, it lets us see the traffic and understand the types of traffic going across those connections. That increased visibility allows us to troubleshoot more quickly and effectively to deliver the performance and reliability our attorneys and clients demand.”

Steele concludes, “With the Aruba SD-WAN, we have raised the bar on the performance, reliability, and security of our services. When we can provide the most efficient solutions for our attorneys, that helps them deliver more responsive service to our clients.”