About Invensys APV
The Invensys Group is well known for its expertise in control, automation and transportation solutions. Of the six core businesses that make up the group one is APV, which supplies process solutions and support services to the food, dairy, beverage and healthcare industries. APV combines expertise in process technology with leading intelligent automation systems and it currently maintains more than 85 offices in over 50 countries worldwide, the majority enjoying interconnectivity with other Invensys business units.

IP Performance provides solutions and services that optimize and manage the performance of IP network infrastructures. Policy-based networking solutions are at the heart of the IP Performance solution that improves application and network performance. NetEnforcer has delivered bandwidth management solutions in conjunction with IP Performance to Service Provider, Corporate, Local Government and Educational customers.

Business Challenge
Before embarking on a global WAN reorganization project, APV needed to find out more about network use, as well as current applications on the network and their status. They also identified a need to enhance security on the Invensys WAN. Establishing a baseline of current bandwidth usage was a critical first stage of the project.

The majority of Invensys business units share a common open infrastructure with firewalls at Internet access points and at some key data centers. The infrastructure is based upon an IP VPN over MPLS from various providers. APV wanted to monitor and analyze traffic by volume, protocol, application and even user. They needed to see dynamic as well as historical graphs and reports before applying controls to manage traffic.

The global structure of APV made it a highly challenging environment to evaluate the capabilities of network devices due to the different technologies such as IPSec, xDSL, fixed line circuit, L2TP, MPLS all deployed within the single WAN - one that affected network resources across many different locations.

The Solution
Although APV were just two days away from signing a contract on a rival system, they agreed to consider a lower cost, more effective solution. IP Performance supplied evaluation equipment to facilitate the comparison between NetEnforcer and an alternative appliance, and a trial deployment of NetEnforcer in 15 world-wide sites was set up.

The NetEnforcer trial was a resounding success. It showed that the competing solutions which focused on compression, rather than bandwidth management, were of no significant benefit in meeting APV's objectives. Upfront costs were dramatically lower than rival solutions and proved to be more cost effective in terms of both capital and operational expenditure.

Optmizing IP Application Flows on the WAN
The solution deployed was based on the NetEnforcer AC-402 together with NetXplorer Centralized Management and Policy Sever. This solution gave APV full visibility of the traffic traversing their WAN links as well as granular control over priorities and bandwidth allocation for different applications, IP addresses and protocols.

The ability to drill down to the most granular level of traffic enabled APV to detect applications that should not have been running across the WAN and to take the necessary corrective action. They can now monitor and manage overused links, establish usage baselines, track usage over time, block or limit specific flows and have the per-application control that the project required. They can also quickly identify PCs and servers that are behaving erratically or unusually due to misconfiguration or virus outbreaks and automatically limit the impact they have on the WAN environment.

NetXplorer lets all APV IT staff worldwide log into the centralized management system with different levels of access and control their own NetEnforcer devices without affecting others on the WAN. A straightforward interface gives access to graphical reports which reduces the level of technical expertise required and APV has access to 24x7 technical support. The devices were also so simple to use that APV was able to self-install all over the world without external suppliers, which reduced start-up costs dramatically.

NetEnforcer Advantages
The choice of a bandwidth management solution offered APV a series of business and technical advantages:

Application-aware visibility and control of WAN traffic
The NetEnforcer gave APV full control over priorities and bandwidth allocation for different applications, IP addresses and protocols.

Enhanced security
Unlimited drill down capability provides granular, real-time visibility and control over WAN traffic flows and helps APV detect abnormal traffic flows and automatically shape or limit them accordingly.

Reduced costs
This solution proved to be most cost-effective both in terms of invested capital and operational expenditure.

In Conclusion
For Invensys APV, NetEnforcer coupled with superior support provided by IP Performance has enabled the smooth execution of a highly-complex global WAN reorganization project without excessive time and capital expenditure.