A strategic partnership provides the foundation for rapid evolution with powerful SD WAN and SASE service
The customer:
A growing European and Canadian equipment service provider
TIP Group is one of Europe and Canada’s leading equipment service providers. Founded in 1968, it operates from more than 130 locations across 18 countries in Europe and Canada. TIP provides transportation and logistics customers with a one-stop-shop experience, offering a range of services including truck and trailer leasing, rental, maintenance and repair, digital solutions and second-hand equipment sales. The company makes frequent acquisitions, and recently acquired LAST og TANK AS in Norway, Savon Rekkahuolto Oy in Finland, and the truck business of EURO-Leasing A/S in Denmark.
The challenge:
Manage acquisitions and remote workers securely
Colt already provided TIP with MPLS services, but the organisation faced a changing environment that demanded a rethink. “TIP had changed significantly since Colt implemented our MPLS services,” said Andy Wyatt, Chief Information Officer at TIP. “Over the previous four years, the company had approximately doubled in revenue, we had acquired many more locations, and the number of users had risen from around 1,800 to more than 3,000.” In line with TIP’s strategy, the organisation had acquired a number of businesses of various sizes during this time. “Some of these businesses are quite large, but a lot of them are relatively small, and we may acquire and integrate several at a time,” said Andy.
”We usually aim to get the acquired businesses migrated to our systems and infrastructure as soon as possible, but MPLS can often take around three months to implement, and that’s too long. As a result we often need to employ a workaround, which can lead to extra work and costs. “Additionally, since the Covid pandemic, we’ve seen a change in working patterns, with many employees moving to hybrid working. These new working practices, along with a changing threat landscape and the fact that acquisitions introduce an increased risk profile, meant that our security needed to evolve too. “Bearing these factors in mind, we started to look at whether an SD WAN solution, with a security technology such as SASE, would be more appropriate for what the business needs now and in the future.”
The solution:
A trusted partner for SD WAN and SASE service
TIP chose Colt to provide SD WAN and SASE at the end of 2022 due to its strong existing relationship, its competitive offering, and Colt’s deep understanding of the customer’s organisation. “We knew that Colt had a full grasp of our business, our network and our requirements, and that it could grow with us even when we’re rapidly expanding,” said Andy. “From the account team to the exec team, Colt had made us feel like our business was a priority, so it made absolute sense to stay with them for this technology transformation.” The project to migrate 125 sites from MPLS to Colt SD WAN and SASE involved ongoing workshops and meetings between Colt and TIP, so that the respective team members on each side could build strong, collaborative, one-to-one relationships. This helped to make sure that communication was open and constructive, that the challenges right across the organisation were fully understood, and that the best solutions were identified.
“From the account team to the exec team, Colt had made us feel like our business was a priority, so it made absolute sense to stay with them for this technology transformation”
The benefits:
A strong relationship supports a fast-moving business
Improved scalability and user experience
Going forward, each site will have dual access, boosting uptime and business continuity. It’s also easier for TIP to dynamically increase bandwidth, and this improved scalability allows the network to be more responsive to short-term demands and longer-term business growth. “User experience is also really important to us,” said Andy. “We have lots of employees in our various branches and workshops who require uninterrupted access to the applications they need to do their jobs.” “That demands a network with availability as close to 100% as possible. But it’s also important to make sure network performance is optimised so our users have the fantastic experience they need to be as productive as possible – and that’s where SD WAN comes in.”
Better agility and security
“Set-up speed is absolutely critical for a fast-moving organisation like ours,” said Andy. “With SD WAN, we’re looking at about half the time to provision a new location compared to MPLS.
That allows us to be much more flexible and agile as a business, so we can onboard new sites, staff and capabilities and realise their value more quickly.”
Colt SASE helps TIP to mitigate the risks from both a complex security environment and an increasingly indistinct network perimeter with more remote users. It provides greater visibility, control and flexibility, and allows the organisation to integrate businesses faster with the reassurance that the security perimeter is still intact.
A partnership for today and tomorrow
TIP has regular access to Colt senior management, leading to a partnership where Colt understands the TIP business and its priorities. “We have a strong outsourcing strategy and it’s vitally important for us to have long-term strategic partners that we can work with for a considerable number of years,” said Andy. “We need our partners to understand our business, support us in bridging IT and the needs of the business, and evolve with us as we grow and move into the future – and with Colt, that’s exactly what we’ve got.”
COMPANY NAME
TIP Group
INDUSTRY
Trailer Service
CHALLENGE
Manage acquisitions and remote workers securely
COLT SOLUTION
A trusted partner for SD WAN and SASE service
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