The challenge

As Mitsubishi Electric branches across Europe have adopted new technologies, such as cloud computing, they’ve worked to optimize and standardize across the board.

Iain Blazey has worked for Mitsubishi Electric UK for more than 35 years, and has been Head of IT since 2013. His highly experienced team is key to running the branch’s business-critical systems, as well as evolving its digital infrastructure and meeting user support requirements.

“For the past decade, we’ve been harmonizing the technology we implement for Mitsubishi Electric within the UK and Ireland and across Europe,” says Blazey. “Historically, each country has operated to its own standards. However, the more we can use the same systems as a group, the better we can manage new technology rollouts at scale and leverage larger user numbers and efficiencies to bring down costs.”

For the UK, the branch’s existing MPLS WAN was under strain as user traffic destined for the internet or public cloud increased. All traffic was routed through centralized internet breakout points, causing increased latency and single points of failure. In addition, the organization had used IP telephony internally for some time, but still used ISDN for external calls. With this legacy technology due to be phased out in the UK by 2025, a new solution was required.

The team set out to upgrade the existing UK data and communications network to improve its performance in a way that would still integrate seamlessly with the European and Global network topologies. They also sought to find a solution that would enable faster responses to changing business requirements, such as managing fluctuating bandwidth usage at the 15 sites, securely introducing the latest interesting SaaS applications, and connecting new business premises.

As Blazey observes, “Data is becoming heavier, businesses are more reliant on it, and people expect to receive and process it faster using a multitude of cloud-based tools. We needed infrastructure in place that was up to managing our business data much more in line with those expectations.”

In early 2020, the requirements for securing users across their network also took a sudden turn. “We were working to finalize our network upgrade when the global COVID-19 pandemic hit and we needed to shift to remote working as quickly as possible,” Blazey explains. “As a group across Europe, we had around 1,000 VPN licenses, but with around 3,500 employees combined, they were rapidly used up. We needed a secure solution to connect our 700+ UK and Ireland workers – fast.”

GTT’s cloud networking services offered the security, improved network visibility, increased control and enhanced network reliability to support the organization’s requirements.

“Data is becoming heavier, businesses are more reliant on it, and people expect to receive and process it faster using a multitude of cloud-based tools.”

Iain Blazey – Head of IT, Mitsubishi Electric UK

The results

Increased efficiency and agility to support business changes

GTT’s Managed SD-WAN offers better visibility across the range of applications used by Mitsubishi Electric UK. The IT team combines this insight with the tools provided in GTT’s customer portal to better control how bandwidth is prioritized, which helps them manage the network more efficiently.

“Given the huge changes in how all of us have had to work following the global pandemic, moving to SD-WAN with GTT was one of the best infrastructure decisions we’ve ever made,” says Iain Blazey. “As a business, our ability to make quick decisions relies on data moving freely between our users, systems and the cloud. At peak times such as the end of a quarter, the load on our network could really strain it. Today, with GTT SD-WAN, our general data throughput is much better than it was before, and the business has noted the improved network performance. It’s fantastic how we’ve continued to successfully support our business, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without the flexibility GTT’s services afford us.”

The pandemic presented the team with some unique challenges, due to the delays it caused for anything requiring on-site presence. When the business wanted to open new premises or relocate, Blazey and his team were able to rise to the challenge quickly due to the high levels of automation and flexibility afforded by GTT Managed SD-WAN.

Blazey shares, “While the UK was in lockdown due to the pandemic, we were asked to help facilitate both the opening of a new warehouse in Yorkshire as well as moving an office location in central London. Without our SD-WAN service from GTT in place, connecting up those sites could have taken as much as three months because of wait times for local fixed cable access installation from third-party providers, followed by the time it would take to install and configure our kit on-site. Our sites were live and configured through the GTT EtherVision portal within a day, really proving the benefits of SD-WAN and also GTT’s flexibility and strength as an access-agnostic provider focused on getting our services up and running as fast as possible.”

A network fit for a hybrid workforce in the cloud

Mitsubishi Electric UK’s cloud strategy currently has Microsoft Office 365 implementation as a key focus. For traffic on the corporate network, the organization is able to leverage GTT’s Tier 1 internet backbone for optimized data transfer across the internet, as well as to Microsoft and other leading cloud providers that the backbone is directly peered with. The combination of more cloud adoption and a proliferation of end user devices outside the corporate network make it ever more important to implement the right security measures. For remote workers, Mitsubishi Electric UK worked with GTT to manage traffic at the user level to both secure the user experience and lessen the load on the corporate network.

When the pandemic hit, GTT proactively supported us and was able to deploy secure remote access through our network quickly to over 600 users,” Blazey shared. “We couldn’t believe how fast the turnaround was! With everyone working from home, we also needed to be smarter about bandwidth utilization, so our central network wasn’t swamped. We worked with GTT to split internet directed traffic straight from the individual user’s laptop, which hugely reduced the load on our central pipes, and also ensured a much better experience for our users.”

Looking ahead, Blazey feels well-prepared for the hybrid workforce of the future. “Many of our colleagues work in customer experience and sales where it’s all about being available when our customers want to reach out. Having secure remote working in place at scale means we can offer much more flexible working conditions to the benefit of our employees and our business.”

Partnering for proven best practice

GTT supported Mitsubishi Electric UK with the transition from MPLS WAN to SD-WAN. GTT delivers a managed service, which includes equipment, access sourcing, implementation and ongoing maintenance and management.

“Throughout our transition, it was great to be able to leverage GTT’s expertise from many previous implementations to help make ours a success,” Blazey comments. “GTT always gives us helpful input and support when we need it. If we have a problem, our awesome account team will help us determine a fix immediately, and then work with us to improve it iteratively as required over time. We appreciate GTT’s willingness to provide us with advice and to share its experience.”

Following the successful implementation, other Mitsubishi Electric divisions are looking to the branch for inspiration on how to develop their own networks.

Blazey noted, “As our networks across the group become more software-defined and agile, I’m also looking forward to simpler IT implementations. We’ll be able to work out how to implement a new solution or technology in a trial or proof-of-concept exercise once, and then roll a successful result out the same way across all our estate – knowing it will encounter the same setups and behave in the expected way everywhere.”

“GTT always gives us helpful input and support when we need it. If we have a problem, our awesome account team will help us determine a fix immediately, and then work with us to improve it iteratively as required over time.”

Iain Blazey – Head of IT, Mitsubishi Electric UK

The connected future

As an innovative organization, Mitsubishi Electric UK has many exciting plans in the works. For voice services, the team plans to take PBXs previously hosted in each branch office and replace them with flexible and interoperable SIP trunking from GTT. This integrates smoothly with GTT’s Managed SD-WAN service, and can include local telephone numbers for Mitsubishi’s users. Furthermore, the team is looking to bring the benefits of Microsoft Teams to bear for its call center teams, improve secure communications with suppliers and enable virtual or augmented reality for better customer service.

Blazey concludes, “GTT is a customer-centric organization with a lot of resources and capabilities, and we benefit from having a long-term relationship. Whether it’s leveraging their expertise in what they’ve done time and time again or working together in partnership to solve our challenges for tomorrow, GTT continues to provide us with thoughtful input and responses that prove useful over time.”

“GTT’s flexibility and strength as an access-agnostic provider focused on getting our services up and running as fast as possible.”

Iain Blazey – Head of IT, Mitsubishi Electric UK