Secure, resilient, and autonomous NaaS impresses Terralogic
A fundamentally simple architecture and offloaded operations empower IT to help students, staff, and researchers succeed.
Terralogic is one of the top software development companies and IT services companies in the USA providing services in areas like cybersecurity, IoT, and Cloud. Their goal is to deliver transformational technology solutions that not only solve customers’ everyday business challenges, but also support a company’s long-term mission. Sound familiar? That’s probably because Nile shares that same vision, making a partnership between the two companies a perfect fit. Terralogic joined the Nile “Connect” Partner Program so it could deliver the cloud-like benefits of Network as a Service (NaaS) by Nile to its own customers.
“The partnership with Nile made sense because, at our cores, we’re both obsessed with our customers’ outcomes and success,” explains Chris Widhelm, Terralogic solutions architect. “And we have confidence in the solution because the Nile team is stacked with leaders in the space. But, of course, we wanted to use it ourselves so that we could recommend it to our customers based on actual experience.”
At A Glance
- Company
Terralogic
- Industry
IT Services & Consulting
- Headquarters
Dallas, TX
- Location
10+ Locations
- Website
We have confidence in the solution because the Nile team is stacked with leaders in the space.
Challenges
- Legacy network solution set to expire within days
- Exorbitant cost to refresh the network
- Complex and time-consuming management of multiple vendor contracts
Outcomes
- Efficient and automated NaaS deployment averts outage, delivers superior network
- Singular consumption model reduces TCO
- Simplified lifecycle management, from Day 0 - Day N, delivered under a singular subscription, including DHCPaaS
NaaS in a hurry - a race against the clock
The perfect opportunity to vet NaaS presented itself when the company’s existing network solution was due for an expensive and time-consuming update.
“We were up against a very tight timeline to make the transition from our old solution, but Nile delivered,” says Widhelm.
Terralogic was down to the wire, with its legacy solution license set to expire within days.
Nile expedited the deployment, defining the network and business requirements and procuring and shipping all of the equipment within a week’s time. On install day, the process was completed in three hours, beating the shut-off date.
“I had a quick call with the Nile team on a Tuesday, and they were on site Friday to install,” recalls Widhelm.
Nile takes care of the entire network installation and activation, which Widhelm is grateful for. He estimates it would have taken him upwards of two weeks, culminating in a Saturday-to-Sunday install. “Nile started saving me time on day one. And since the deployment, I have extra time to focus on the front end of the business,” he says.
Vice President of Software Solutions at Terralogic, Venkatesh Jayakumar, was pleasantly surprised by how quickly Nile was able to bring up the site. He sees that as a huge win for Terralogic customers who adopt NaaS by Nile.
“With NaaS, you can scale up so easily and spin off new branch offices quickly,” he says. “Just call Nile and tell them you have a new site and in a week or two, it’s done.”
Protecting productivity
The high performance and reliability of Nile’s SLA-backed network has exceeded Terralogic expectations, providing a seamless user experience.
“The Nile SLAs guarantee that we won’t have a network issue or outage on our side that will impact the service we provide to our customers,” says Jayakumar.
In addition, Nile’s SLAs make it easier for Terralogic to support its customers who deploy Nile NaaS because they know the Nile network is reliable. This allows Terralogic to devote more time to providing new and innovative technology solutions to its customers instead of focussing on guaranteeing and monitoring network performance.
Along with the service, Jayakumar has access to the Nile Portal which provides straightforward and actionable insights into daily operations. Whenever there is an issue that impacts the Terralogic user experience, the Nile Portal is invaluable for quick identification and troubleshooting.
“When we experienced a connectivity issue, the Nile Portal immediately identified it as a problem with our ISP,” recounts Jayakumar. “Instant access to that information let us remedy the situation quickly and get everyone back to work, which is critical to productivity.”
Network microsegmentation is the hardest thing to implement within zero trust and Nile does it straight out of the box.
The holy grail of security
Security is one of the aspects of the Nile service that Jayakumar and Widhelm are most excited to share with their customers.
Nile’s SSO-enabled Wi-Fi connections bolster the security posture at Terralogic. Jayakumar and Widhelm save time now that they don’t have to swap out SSID pass phrases for the Wi-Fi. Those SSO-enabled Wi-Fi connections, along with zero trust access, authenticate every user and device and protect the network from malicious actors.
“Network microsegmentation is the hardest thing to implement within zero trust and Nile does it straight out of the box,” says Widhelm. “That level of control at the firewall gives you a really tight and secure environment.”
And with Nile, there are no additional charges to have microsegmentation or end-to-end MACsec encryption because they are integrated into the solution. The complexities of implementing and configuring policies and managing multiple vendor licenses and contracts are eliminated thanks to the comprehensive nature of the Nile solution.
For reliable DHCP, go to the source
For a cloud-first company like Terralogic, DHCP as a service is critical, and that comes standard with the Nile NaaS implementation.
“The importance of DHCP can’t be overstated, without it, no one can access the network,” says Widhelm. “The person who wrote DHCP was actively involved in the original RFC of DHCP, so we had full confidence deploying it at Terralogic and recommending it to our customers.”
It’s critical to secure DHCP, but that can be difficult to achieve. With Nile’s DHCPaaS, there is smooth communication and connectivity between device clients and cloud servers. Device requests are assigned an IP address, that information is on the network and is secure and protected from snooping, sniffing and rogue DHCP attacks.
In addition to providing the best DHCP security, Nile eliminates the complexity associated with managing and properly configuring it. That translates directly into time savings that allow the IT department to instead focus on business-critical initiatives.
“We value Nile DHCP for taking care of all DHCP intricacies. We used to have to dedicate a full IT headcount just to watch the server for duplicate IP addresses being assigned,” recalls Jayakumar. “Now that person can focus on tasks that support Terralogic’s customer-first mission.”
The person who wrote DHCP was actively involved in the original RFC of DHCP, so we had full confidence deploying it at Terralogic and recommending it to our customers.
A solution that will grow with Terralogic and its customers
Widhelm is excited about what’s on the horizon with Nile. He’s been impressed with how quickly Nile takes customer feedback and incorporates it into the NaaS environment. And now that the burden of managing and maintaining the Terralogic network is off of his plate, he has the time to roll out those new features, leveraging his Nile deployment to the fullest.
As Terralogic continues to expand its own Nile deployment at locations throughout the organization, Jayakumar and Widhelm are busy evangelizing NaaS by Nile to their customers.
“The engineering team behind Nile is quite stellar and we’re confident communicating to our customers that they can trust Nile,” says Jayakumar. “We are excited to continue our relationship with Nile and grow together.”
Ready to get started?
Learn how nile can improve your network infrastructure today.
