Horsham District Council is benefitting from a Cisco Meraki cloud-managed network to connect council employees and provide secure website access to a range of public services throughout West Sussex.
The Meraki ecosystem, designed and delivered by Redway Networks, has transformed the council’s network experience with the centralisation of networking and security in the cloud and delivered secure access to information from wherever users reside with has enabled the council to provide quality services to staff, internal clients and its community.
When Horsham council first started working with Redway Networks it was dependent on a controller-based network which was adequate but couldn’t support its future direction and the network experienced it wanted to provide. Horsham wanted to go to a cloud environment to simplify the network and make it easier to monitor and manage. For futureproofing, Redway Networks recommended replacing its end-of-life, on-premises switches and wireless LAN controller with Cisco Meraki to improve security and wireless speeds in its offices and public areas.
Faz Sadough, Senior IT Engineer at Horsham District Council says:
“With digital transformation being an important part of our strategy, we wanted a future proofed network solution and data system that everyone could view and administer. I really liked the Meraki’s cloud first management approach and its ease of use and set up. In addition, the reliability of the network and summary reports in the Meraki dashboard made a word of difference as in terms of network management”.
With Meraki, the Wi-Fi experience at the council is now consistent for all employees and guests and IT has complete control of the network.
Faz says;
“With Meraki I can view and filter client devices, and usage easily. Before Meraki, the wireless speed in the offices was so slow we had to patch in Ethernet to staff desks, but now the Wi-Fi is so fast everyone can be in the office connecting to the wireless network which has improved collaboration and reduced port density. Staff regularly receive positive comments from visitors about the quality and performance of the free Wi-Fi.”
With all Horsham’s web traffic coming in one IP address and 80% of staff working remotely, the council faced a new challenge in securing staff Internet use when working remotely. The council contacted Redway Networks who recommended integrating Cisco Umbrella to its firewall to combine multiple cloud-based security functions into one solution and extend data protection to devices, remote users and locations.
Faz says:
“Before Cisco Umbrella we had to run individual clusters, which was time consuming, but with Umbrella it’s so simple as the client is sitting on the user’s machine. The cloud-based management, configurations and immense visibility and data captured in the Meraki dashboard means we have the perfect solution for measuring KPIs on performance and how we are delivering public services.”
For more information contact www.redwaynetworks.com