Global IT/HR Consulting Company Optimizes Networks, Expanding Cloud Services and Lowering Costs With Infoblox
Summary
A multi-billion-dollar American global IT and HR consulting company (IT/HR) providing cloud-based digital business and employee services was strategically launched through a private investment banking acquisition shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic.
As an outsourcing employee benefits organization, the IT/HR firm specializes in technology-enabled health, wealth and human resource services. It operates regional offices in North America, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Argentina, serving over 4,000 clients and their nearly 40 million workers through 16,000 employees on five continents in 100 countries. Founded on an Infoblox core network services platform, the company began an ambitious series of global strategic mergers and acquisitions (M&As) including seven human resources, health, financial, benefits and technology companies designed to extend its cloud-enabled technology and HR services worldwide. With its core strategic business units in place, the firm looked internally and externally to streamline network operations and complexities, reduce costs and deliver its services through cloud network expansion. Infoblox offered the perfect combination of solutions to solve the company’s unique challenges.
WHY CHANGE:
Optimize global networks to simplify M&A complexity
Having launched its initial operations on Infoblox, the IT/HR company challenged its core network services provider with three key priorities. The first, consolidate, refresh and streamline network complexities arising from multiple, global, highly regulated and mission-critical M&As. The second, optimize its global network infrastructure, reduce costs and ensure a secure, reliable and consistent connected network experience across its distributed locations. And third, standardize and expand its cloud network services on vNIOS, AWS, BloxOne Cloud and SD-WAN integrated technologies.
WHY NOW:
Ensure consistency, secure and optimize global networks and expand cloud operations
M&A Complexity.
At its inception, the IT/HR company leveraged its former owner’s Infoblox relationship and deployed two NIOS DNS, DHCP and IPAM (DDI) Grids. Though it split its DNS/DHCP namespace, the IT/HR startup and its former parent company still shared network data. Once new operations were stabilized, the IT/HR firm then began a rapid succession of strategic partnerships and M&As to strengthen and extend its technology-enabled HR solutions around the globe. In its second year, the IT/HR firm partnered with a leading global software developer. It then acquired an HR advisory company and U.S. behavioral health organization. The following year, it added five companies: an ERP solutions provider and human capital management (HCM) company; a cloud-based learning and talent management software developer; a cloud financial solutions and services firm; an employee benefits administration technology company; and a payroll processing, talent administration and HR analytics firm. Each acquisition presented its own platform challenges and complexities. The payroll, talent and HR analytics firm, for example, had operations in the U.K., North America, Belgium and Argentina. It ran core network services on Microsoft Windows Server but struggled with regional and global network visibility, reliability and control. The IT/HR parent company showed its newly acquired firm its Infoblox enterprise DDI solution. Shortly thereafter, the decision was made to migrate the acquired company off Microsoft and onto Infoblox’s enterprise DDI platform. By consolidating network services on Infoblox for all its divisions, the IT/ HR parent company could simplify and streamline its operations to better manage the complexities of M&A activity and deliver a consistently high-quality network experience across its worldwide operations.
Customer Profile: A global IT and HR consulting company with 16,000 employees providing cloud-based digital business and human services in 100 countries on 5 continents serving over 4,000 clients and nearly 40 million employees.
Why Change: The company had three priorities: consolidate and reduce M&A complexity; optimize global network infrastructure, reduce costs and ensure a reliable, consistent and secure network experience across distributed locations; standardize and expand cloud-managed services on Infoblox, AWS and SD-WAN
Why Now: With seven global companies acquired in rapid succession, the company needed consistency and to “right size” infrastructure to lower cost. It required reliable, redundant global DNS/DHCP services and centralized IPAM visibility for error checking, audit and security. By offloading its high-cost legacy platform, it could use Infoblox DTC to expand and improve load balancing and disaster recovery (DR). In HR services, security was also a high priority for malware, zero-day DNS attack mitigation and ecosystem security data threat sharing, all essential for optimizing business operations and continuity
Why Infoblox: Infoblox provides data center and hybrid cloud reliability, consistent, centralized management, DR and network security across distributed locations at lower cost to empower growth and scalability to meet operational objectives.
Infoblox Solutions: NIOS DDI with Failover, BloxOne DDI, BloxOne Threat Defense, Reporting and Analytics, Security Ecosystem
Network Optimization and Cost Savings.
During the pandemic, with its strategic acquisitions in place, the IT/HR company asked Infoblox to analyze, redesign and “right size” its network to improve consistency, cut costs and initiate an infrastructure refresh. The IT/HR firm required a highly reliable, resilient and secure core network services platform for on-premises and global hybrid and public cloud networks. It specified a centralized and fully managed DDI solution with high-availability (HA) DHCP failover for geographic redundancy. It also stipulated multiple DNS appliances for HA, DNS caching and secure recursive DNS services for outbound queries. Separate external DNS servers were further designated for increased DNS separation and security. With the highly regulated nature of the company’s health, financial and HR services, visibility was also a top priority for network optimization. Reporting and Analytics provided integrated dashboards and reports for audit and compliance, real-time network telemetry and performance, forensic investigation and resource planning, all from a single control plane. Infoblox’s technical assessment also revealed significant cost savings by offloading the IT/HR company’s F5 Local Traffic Management platform and using the CapEx and OpEx savings to deploy DNS Traffic Control (DTC) for global server load balancing. DTC’s intelligent DNS routing based on health status, geolocation and customizable metatags not only replaced F5’s functionality but also saved time, effort and cost through automated DR with less IT overhead and intervention.
Network Protection.
Given the continuous availability and security required by its health, wealth and HR services, Infoblox’s network redesign included Advanced DNS Protection (ADP) to guard against malicious inbound and outbound DNS attacks. It also incorporated BloxOne Threat Defense for on-prem security and BloxOne Threat Defense-Cloud for continuously updated protection and DNS content category filtering against malware, ransomware, domain generation algorithm (DGA), botnets, Fast-Flux, zero day and data exfiltration. DNS Threat Insight (part of BloxOne Threat Defense) provided sophisticated machine learning for continuous monitoring and termination of DNS data exfiltration. Lastly, Infoblox included Security Ecosystem to share DDI and security data with existing security tools for detection, investigation and remediation. Integrating Infoblox’s core network and value-added services with BloxOne Threat Defense security delivers secure, enterprise-grade network solutions to optimize and protect the IT/ HR company’s operations worldwide.
Cloud Expansion.
With its global footprint, the company’s cloud expansion strategy was critical for optimizing service access, consistency and reducing costs. The IT/HR firm combined several components to improve its visibility, control and availability across its hybrid and public cloud environments. For public cloud services, it chose to standardize on AWS. Infoblox’s vNIOS integration on AWS provides DNS and response policy zone capabilities, IPAM and vDiscovery, DHCP services for on-premises clients, fault tolerance and DR solutions. For cloud-managed services, Infoblox provides the BloxOne Cloud including BloxOne Threat Defense security solutions and BloxOne DDI. For the company’s remote locations, BloxOne DDI lowers the cost of network management while providing local survivability and local access across regional and global sites. In addition, acquisition of the payroll, talent and HR analytics firm brought greater focus and advancements to cloud services, including an SD-WAN initiative seeking to reduce costs, increase availability, enhance performance, improve agility and simplify management. Infoblox’s Viptela SD-WAN integration aligns perfectly with the IT/HR company’s SD-WAN initiative and allows it to use BloxOne DDI for testing its Viptela SD-WAN integration before rolling it into production. With vNIOS for AWS, BloxOne Threat Defense, BloxOne DDI and Viptela SD-WAN integrations, Infoblox enables the organization to realize its cloud expansion strategy while providing an integrated single source of solutions for its global network cloud services.
Pain Points
- Complex global M&A network operations
- Global network protection against malware and security threats
- High F5 load balancing CapEx and Opex
- Cloud services consistency and expansion
Benefits
- Simplified and centralized DDI
- DHCP HA and redundancy
- Consistent, secure DNS user experience
- Operational efficiency
- Global traffic management & DR
- Lower cost
- Expanded cloud services
WHY INFOBLOX:
Optimized, Reliable and Cost-Effective Hybrid Cloud Networks
The IT/HR company leveraged its Infoblox technology relationship and built a world-class global technology and HR services company in less than seven years. Infoblox helped the firm consolidate and simplify the network complexities associated with acquiring, merging and running seven global, highly regulated and mission-critical health, wealth and HR services companies. Infoblox optimized an on-premises, hybrid and cloud network infrastructure, reduced costs and deployed a reliable, consistent and secure network experience across the company’s distributed locations. Infoblox also helped the organization achieve its cloud expansion strategy through secure integrated solutions designed to reduce cost, expand availability, enhance performance, improve agility and simplify network management. Most importantly, Infoblox unified network visibility, boosted efficiency through automation, elevated control and secured network operations so the company could continue its growth and mission of delivering technology-based HR services to business customers around the globe for years to come.