GDT delivers modern, resilient infrastructure for US retailer
About the Customer
Customer Challenges
GDT’s customer, a national retailer, had been struggling to operate efficiently on legacy technology pieced together from past merger and acquisition activities. The retail locations were connected to two data centers via a blend of multiprotocol label switching technology and VPN.
However, when the primary data center experienced a major outage, failover to the secondary site did not go as planned, disrupting operations, the customer experience, and ultimately, the retailer’s profitability. Restoring connectivity to the retail locations took longer than expected. Additional impacts included cloud connectivity, corporate services–and thanks to unsupported, outdated hardware–edge services.
CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS
Our customer needed a more modern, resilient hybrid data center solution with state-of-the-art technology and failover capabilities they could count on. Project requirements included:
- Modern, consistent networking and security technology across locations
- Seamless backup and failover capabilities
- Improved performance and ability to deliver on SLA obligations
- Ability to meet compliance requirements
- Increased visibility and faster time to issue resolution
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SOLUTION: A hybrid data center overhaul, leveraging Palo Alto Networks technologies
GDT helped our customer completely redesign their core data center infrastructure, leveraging a spine/leaf design. As part of the project, GDT established a third data center to provide failover for retail site connectivity, corporate network services, public cloud connectivity, and internet across all sites.
Additionally, GDT helped transition the retail customer to a Palo Alto Networks-based security platform. GDT re-architected their data center network to meet compliance requirements, prioritizing segmentation and security. This work enabled the retailer to transition between sites seamlessly and meet customer SLAs.
In addition, GDT leveraged Palo Alto Networks solutions to deliver a cloud connectivity architecture that can support multiple public cloud providers and ensure secure configurations across the public cloud. Furthermore, GDT modernized site connectivity for retail sites, leveraging a direct-to-cloud approach for many site applications and end-user traffic, minimizing traffic demand back to data center locations and improving performance and resiliency across retail locations.
Finally, to increase visibility to the security operations team, GDT leveraged Palo Alto Networks’ capabilities for logging and visibility to help improve security and reduce time to resolution for security incidents.
Benefits
GDT’s team of architects and engineers applied Palo Alto Networks’ platform-based technology to deliver a modern, robust solution for the customer. GDT worked closely with Palo Alto Networks during the implementation to rapidly resolve issues. Benefits included:
Highly resilient infrastructure with failover capabilities
An architecture designed to support multiple public cloud providers and secure public cloud access
Streamlined connectivity between retail sites and data centers
Improved performance and ability to meet SLA requirements
Accelerated modernization to Palo Alto Networks security technologies
Increased visibility and faster time to resolution
GDT is an elite Palo Alto Networks CYBERFORCE member
GDT is among a select group of partners who have met the Diamond Innovator performance, capabilities, and business requirements of the Palo Alto Networks NextWave Partner Program. Additionally, GDT is part of the CYBERFORCE, a Palo Alto Networks technical recognition program that recognizes only its most elite partners for their pre- and post-sales expertise.
“Having CYBERFORCE members helps GDT streamline the sales cycle by ensuring the right experts are involved at the right time,” said Jeanne Malone, Vice President of Cybersecurity at GDT. “This lends credibility to our position as a trusted advisor.”
Furthermore, according to Josh Fedor, Senior Director of Cybersecurity at GDT, “The Palo Alto Networks CYBERFORCE program allows GDT to give customers a level of confidence that the experts they’re speaking to are qualified and certified to make the best decision for their business needs.”
