Grundfos Case Study

An established global manufacturing company, Grundfos’ WAN was designed to support a distributed and internally-hosted application environment. Grundfos had a global WAN provided by a number of different data communications suppliers. The company’s application environment was changing due to the deployment of Office 365, and a data centre consolidation programme had recently been decided which meant that the design of the WAN was no longer consistent with the company’s needs.

With an ever-expanding global presence, Grundfos needed to ensure that their WAN was capable of supporting the business into the future and that the best possible commercial terms were being realised. They turned to The Network Collective for expert advice.

TNC began by producing a baseline model of Grundfos’ existing provision, undertaking a detailed analysis of the current state of the WAN using billing data, contract documentation and technical-requirement capture workshops. Once this baseline was agreed with Grundfos we took a ‘blank sheet of paper’ approach to the redesign.

TNC analysed a number of possible global network deployment models, ranging from a single-provider global network, through to a regional-based multi-provider network, as well as assessing a number of internet breakout options. TNC held workshops in Bjerringbro with Grundfos to analyse the different models available and to provide a market spread of pricing which Grundfos could achieve in a competitive tender process.

TNC worked with Grundfos to select the optimum model for their global WAN, based on the cost, complexity and performance characteristics of the different models analysed. We then defined a detailed procurement strategy, advising Grundfos on the best sourcing approach and recommending the ideal service providers to include in a procurement process.

TNC demonstrated to Grundfos the cost savings they could achieve through a competitive tender process. Savings of up to 34% were identified against the baseline model.

Armed with this specialist advice Grundfos was able to go to market for a bespoke WAN, confident that the infrastructure design was efficient and robust enough to support the global business as it expands and encompasses new technologies and territories.