Luminous Power Technologies, part of the Schneider Group with revenue of Rs 3500 crore, is among the leading power and home electrical specialist in India having a vast portfolio. With seven manufacturing units, more than 28 sales offices in India and presence in over 36 countries, the company’s 6,000 employees serve more than 60,000 channel partners and millions of customers. The company was aiming at achieving reduction in cost of connectivity, fully secure connection between locations, a solution that brings together SD-WAN with WLAN, LAN and security under a single software-defined framework for policy and segmentation; and simplifying IT operations with the help of network.
To meet these objectives, CI Infotech undertook a networking project consisting switching at core and edge layer, controller based Wi-Fi with authentication solution and SD WAN branch solutions across 20 locations pan-India. This project is one of the first SD-WAN branch solution deployment for HPE Aruba in India. The complete solution was from HPE Aruba including all networking devices, authentication licenses, monitoring software for reporting, etc. For this project, the CIO took special approval from parent company as such solution was never deployed in customer setup in last 15 years of existence. Luminous was ready to take risk, as for the company, the prime objective was to simplify IT operations basis software defined framework for policy and segmentation.
Luminous was using multiple ISVs at different locations; whereby up-time availability of connectivity was major issue. The company was spending approximately Rs 12 lakh per month as CapEx for managing such links. No centralised policy was implemented for security, although it was locally available in bits and pieces. Post deployment, the TCO was reduced per month by 90 per cent. It further resulted in simplified IT operations and over all IT service availability and productivity improved approximately 20 per cent. In addition, the BYOD culture received big boost which resulted in users working with more flexibility and freedom, as the complete security layer was taken care of.
SD-WAN branch solution in India is, itself, a new initiative and very few customers have deployed this solution completely. In addition to this, Luminous chose to automate the complete IT process and warehouse inventory management with the help of Wi-Fi solution at warehouse and plants which helped in reducing dependency on manpower and improving overall productivity by increasing number of dispatch per minute and providing the backbone for better inventory management.
great post; thanks