As one of Australia’s largest private construction groups with the scale and certainty of a tier one construction company and the culture and agility to stay ahead change, Built is on a mission to improve the way the world is built.

Known for delivering the highest quality construction, fitout and refurbishment projects, Built works across all major property sectors. The company’s commitment to delivering quality in every aspect of what they do means that it has a 70% repeat business rate from its clients.

  • Challenges
  • Solution
  • Outcome

Challenges

Continuing Growth
Built’s success meant it was operating in 9 offices and up to 100 project sites across all regions. Project site set up and tear down was causing increased workload on the IT team and additions to the WAN solution was increasing operational costs.

Migration to SAAS Services
Built’s cloud-first strategy meant a complex Hybrid Multi-cloud offering with most services transitioned to cloud. To secure access to cloud services, Built utilise express routers between their MPLS network and the cloud instances.

A Different Connectivity Solution
Connectivity between these sites was imperative to the successful completion of projects and Built was finding that its current MPLS Network was costly and complex. Instead Built wanted a simple, easy to manage and cost-effective networking solution.

A New Way to Connect
Not only did Built need a smarter networking solution between sites, but it also required secure access from its sites to its cloud-based applications in Azure. At the time, this was not a common solution, with few companies having the expertise to implement this type of cloud security as part of a networking solution.

Solution

The Natilik team understood the challenges that Built was experiencing and demonstrated, through a Proof of Value solution offering, an Azure cloud-based Meraki security solution. The Natilik team deployed a Meraki vMX virtual firewall into Azure and assisted with Azure back-end configuration to integrate the solution with the legacy WAN solution. The solution was scaled and configured to allow for all offices to migrate from their legacy WAN to the Meraki SDWAN solution and enable its teams to operate seamlessly no matter their location.

What stood out to Built was Natilik’s understanding and ability to assist in the configuration of a network that would securely auto-provision IPsec VPN tunnels between physical sites and the Azure cloud environment. It was the knowledge and understanding of Meraki’s comprehensive security at both a site and cloud level that led to Built choosing to partner with Natilik for the project.

Following the successful PoV, Natilik deployed Meraki SD-WAN across 74 locations in Australia and New Zealand using MX physical appliances to create a secure network. The virtualised vMX appliance was key to this project, as this enabled the establishment of secure and optimised connectivity from Built’s branch sites and the Azure cloud environment.

Once the central network was set up with the network administrators, template designs were used for the project sites to allow for simple, one-touch deployment, which can be used and adapted when new sites are established over time.

Outcome

Built now has a complete Cisco Meraki SD-WAN solution securely connecting its multiple international sites, easily managed through a cloud accessible dashboard. Cisco Meraki security appliances provide best-in-class network security with next-gen firewall, intrusion prevention and content filtering all incorporated. Built can now operate securely and focus on its ongoing construction projects, confident that the network is fully secure against any potential threats.

The time saved on-site rollouts has been a huge benefit for Built as the IT team can configure new sites remotely in just a matter of minutes, negating the need for travel and ultimately speeding up the process. As well as cost savings through the reduced need for travel, Built has saved money through the removal of its expensive legacy MPLS network. With the removal of the legacy MPLS network, Built can also retire the Express Routes into Azure to see further OPEX savings.

The ease of the day-to-day management of the Meraki SD-WAN solution, with dashboards and insights, will ensure a better experience for users as the network can be continually optimised to ensure sites can quickly access everything they require, even from the most remote locations. The additional visibility that the dashboard provides enables the team to quickly remediate any issues that do occur, reducing any potential downtime to the business.

Three Project Outcomes

  • Centralised Control

    Built now has powerful networking and security infrastructure for all its sites, which is simple to control and easy to manage. Zero-touch cloud provisioning means the team can quickly configure sites and set up policies to optimise performance and the user experience, whenever and from wherever they are, directly from their Meraki dashboard.

  • Insight

    The Meraki dashboard provides the team with advanced insights that were not available to them before, enabling them to view the performance of the network through monitoring bandwidth consumption and application usage across all sites.

  • Reduced Operational Expense

    Having the ability to set up a new site remotely removes the need for travel, which saves on operational expenditure and gives time back to the IT team who can focus on projects that are supporting the growth of the business.