LanDynamix, one of South Africa’s leading managed services specialist organisations, has completed a successful migration to a software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) for its longstanding client, AllLife. The new network provides greater flexibility, delivers higher speed and can accommodate growth, says Leandro Valentini, head of IT: IT operations, facilities and collections at AllLife.

“Aside from all these functional benefits, the new SD-WAN architecture is delivering exceptional savings for us,” he adds. “It’s also removing a lot of the risk that we face.”

AllLife is a niche insurance administrator offering affordable life and disability cover to everybody, including people living with HIV and diabetes. A particular source of pride is the fact that AllLife was the first to provide life cover to people living with HIV in South Africa.

Ethan Searle, senior technology advisor at LanDynamix, explains that SD-WAN allows the network typology to be simplified, making support and management much easier and less time consuming. Another big advantage is its flexibility, especially important given that technology is changing business models so fast.

“By shifting to this SD-WAN network architecture, AllLife is, to a certain extent, future-proofing itself. Its inherent flexibility means that it will be much easier to shift legacy systems into the cloud in due course, which will in turn simplify the entire IT environment while realising further cost savings,” Searle says.

Key requirement

A key requirement for the AllLife network is to link the various branches together securely as life insurance administrators hold large amounts of highly sensitive personal information. While the former MPLS-based network was intrinsically secure, it was unsuitable for AllLife’s desire for each segment of the network to be individually secured, so that if one site was compromised it could be isolated rapidly to prevent the infection spreading across the network. Thanks to the flexibility of the SD-WAN topology, the network could be segmented to ensure that users only had access to what they needed, and that a security incident in one area would not spread to other areas.

Fortinet was used to secure this segmented network. Fortinet forms part of LanDynamix’s typical technology stack, and its firewall appliances include SD-WAN technology, making it the ideal choice. Named Fortigate, the Fortinet firewall appliance provides encrypted links over the open Internet for a secure, cost-effective site-to-site VPN. Fortigate provides full security, including intrusion detection and application control.

LanDynamix has been providing a range of managed services to AllLife for many years, and the SD-WAN is also being offered on the same model. This means that IT management is greatly simplified for AllLife, and costs are predictable.

“Predictable, monthly costs coupled with big savings are a hallmark of our ongoing partnership with LanDynamix,” says Valentini. “They have been part of our team for many years because they are completely professional and really look after our company and its interests and are always on hand to help us brainstorm solutions to our business problems,” he says.

About LanDynamix
LanDynamix provides cybersecurity solutions and managed services in the South African ICT arena. Our areas of specialisation include remote support and monitoring, as well as management. Our Security Operations Centre delivers globally competitive levels of protection to our customers’ businesses. We use these services and solutions to operate our clients’ technologies for them, protect them from security breaches, and consequently free them to focus on core business and growth. LanDynamix can maximise clients’ competitive advantage, while minimising down-time, risk and costs. For further information, please visit www.landynamix.co.za.