Successfully migrating IVC Evidensia to a Managed Secure SD-WAN solution.

Background

IVC Evidensia is Europe’s leading veterinary care provider, with a network of 1,682 clinics, spanning 21 countries across Europe.

Founded in 2011, under the name Independent Vetcare, the organisation was originally established when 20 veterinary practices came together, and has been growing rapidly ever since, with many more practices joining over the last few years.

In May 2017, Independent Vetcare combined with Evidensia, a well-respected veterinary group which was already established across Northern Europe, and in 2019 the organisation unified under the name IVC Evidensia.

Set up by vets for vets, such has been the success of the organisation that it now has approximately 22,000 employees and helps in excess of three million pets per year. IVC Evidensia attributes its strength to its people, saying that its vets, nurses and support staff, with their skills, enthusiasm and dedication, are the group’s greatest assets.

Challenge

IVC Evidensia’s great success has resulted in rapid expansion, but this has also brought with it some pressing IT issues, which the organisation needed help to resolve.

With a growing estate of many separate practice sites, each with its own individual connectivity and infrastructure, there was a lack of IT standardisation throughout the organisation, which presented challenges that immediately needed to be addressed.

In particular, the group’s IT security landscape was a major concern, as a result of the inconsistent technologies deployed across individual sites. This had led to a lack of visibility of possible cyberthreats, and there was therefore an urgent requirement to strengthen the level of IT security in place throughout the organisation.

In addition, with limited internal field resources and a support partner that was not meeting its requirements, IVC Evidensia also needed the reliable, professional technical support that TIEVA could provide.

Solution

To address IVC Evidensia’s concerns around IT security, TIEVA ,in partnership with Fortinet, delivered an overall solution made up of several elements.

Firstly, TIEVA field engineers visited each of IVC Evidensia’s practice sites to replace existing routers with FortiGate security appliances. This enabled SD-WAN technology to be employed, helping to enhance security and boost application performance. It was also used to route all site traffic through TIEVA’s firewall as a service (FWaaS), which uses Fortinet’s next-generation unified threat management firewall technology, to deliver a high-performing security perimeter encompassing all of IVC Evidensia’s UK sites.

Building on the installation of SD-WAN, TIEVA has since replaced the connectivity at all of IVC Evidensia’s sites with business-grade fibre broadband and leased line alternatives, providing consolidated billing and a single point of contact for external data transmission for all sites.

By offering all technologies as part of a managed service, technical support has been provided for the platform that has been deployed, enabling IVC Evidensia to benefit from TIEVA’s expert-level Fortinet accreditation, and gain access to the wealth of experience within TIEVA’s technical teams.

Outcome

Overall, the solution deployed by TIEVA has substantially reduced management overheads for IVC Evidensia and generated greater operating cost savings than if a distributed security subscription model had been used instead.

Through its engagement with TIEVA, IVC Evidensia now has reliable, multi-layered IT security in place, which provides robust protection against cyberthreats for the entire organisation. As a result of the deployment of this new technology, and in conjunction with the installation of a Forti Manager centralised security management system, IVC Evidensia has also gained overall visibility and management across its whole estate, from a single ‘pane of glass’.

The organisation also now benefits from high-quality, fast, dependable and consistent connectivity at all its sites, providing bill consolidation and generating maximum economies of scale for the business.

A dedicated service manager has also been appointed, to act as a liaison between IVC Evidensia and TIEVA and ensure that any issues are dealt with promptly and effectively. This engagement has enabled a continuous and ongoing service review to be carried out, so the strategic objectives of IVC Evidensia can be understood and relevant enhancements discussed. As a result, the organisation has also adopted colocation services, bringing further operational, financial and management benefits.