Chalet Center Ensures Connectivity with WatchGuard and Orbid
Setting up a centralized company network providing secure and seamless connections between head office and individual branch locations? Of course you should. But you may find it a little challenging to do so if your IT staff consists of a single person whose availability is limited to a handful of working hours per week. That is why Chalet Center, specialist in wooden garden structures, opted for the WatchGuard network solution based on Firebox firewalls, partnering with Orbid for the implementation process. Chalet Center, known for its tailor-made wooden construction work, including chalets, carports, garages, and saunas, is headquartered in the Belgian city of Temse and operates a total of eleven stores throughout the country.
“Originally, our outlets all had their own IT systems, resulting in data inconsistency and inefficient business processes,” says Ronny Schulz, responsible for ICT and finance at Chalet Center. “Customer data were scattered across multiple locations and there was no centralized product information, all of which complicated our sales and support procedures. It is important that, within the same company, everyone has access to the same data, regardless of where a product happens to be located or in which store it was sold.”
Challenge : Centralized company network
“Over the past 15 years, centralizing our processes to increase business efficiency has been our primary mission,” Schulz continues. During that period, this has supported the creation of an infrastructure of thin clients allowing users to log in to a core enterprise system. What remained lacking in this initial stage of centralization was a company-wide, safely accessible, flexible and manageable business network connecting all of the existing data and IT assets and making them available to every employee from any location.
There was, in other words, a clear demand for improved connectivity between the various IT infrastructures. But there was one key condition any new solution would have to meet. It had to be user friendly and maintenance free. “I am the one person bearing system responsibility within the organization and IT is not my professional priority. I can spend only about 10 percent of my time on tech matters.”
Solution: Firebox T40 and T80
In the end, Chalet Center chose the Firebox firewalls solution supplied by WatchGuard, a choice partly inspired by the system’s user friendliness and its option for central control from WatchGuard Cloud, covering both physical Firebox components and the virtual Firebox Cloud in Azure. At the heart of the network are two Firebox T80 firewalls operating as a FireCluster from the company’s head office, the different devices acting as mutual failover backups. “If one of them malfunctions, the other one keeps the whole IT infrastructure running at maximum performance,” Schulz explains. Each of the eleven branch locations has a Firebox T40 connection to the network.
Connecting new locations is no problem, thanks to WatchGuard’s RapidDeploy genuine ZeroTouch implementation capabilities, even where recent hardware models like the T45 are involved. “It allows me to set up firewall policies and take care of all relevant settings in advance from the Watchguard Cloud environment. All the branch store then has to do, is connect the device to the network and plug in. The Firebox automatically retrieves the settings without anyone having to lift a finger. I don’t even have to be physically present at that point, which obviously saves me a lot of time and effort,” Schulz concludes.
It is Chalet Center’s intention to also deploy the extended Firebox T80 SD WAN functionality in order to further improve the quality of their VoIP connections. “We would like to use SD WAN for optimized VoIP performance based on dynamic Internet connection switching. Currently, we can only connect one suitable provider from our location, but in the future we hope to add a second connection to fully profit from SD WAN’s extensive potential,” says Schulz.
Result
The benefits of the new infrastructure are evident in Chalet Center’s day-to-day operations and they are mostly related to seemingly simple tasks like sending print request from a thin client to the appropriate printer. But the added user comfort also applies to the VPN connections used by employees to securely log in to the company system from their homes or other remote locations. The system requires minimal to zero maintenance or management. And in the unlikely case of a firewall "going down," Schulz is immediately alerted by an email update from WatchGuard Cloud, informing him of the affected location and allowing for immediate corrective action. Moreover, a 4G failover connection remains available to ensure continued stability, with each Firebox linked to a dedicated 4G router.
Firewall implementation facilitated by Orbid
Partnering with Orbid was essential for the system implementation. “The direct lines of communication and Orbid’s hands-on approach have really made the difference,” says Schulz. “WatchGuard Cloud’s multi-tier/ multi-tenant design uniquely enables hybrid management, which is an option I genuinely regretted not having in our former arrangements with Barracuda. It allows me to make configuration changes on my own accord, while remaining assured of Orbid’s assistance. They were always available when I had questions and offered remote hands-on support throughout the process without keeping me from applying the changes I wanted to make. The expertise they provided made sure that the problems we encountered were swiftly resolved. The cooperation with Orbid enabled us to rapidly shift gears whenever we had to. We knew we had a partner we could always rely on.”
Chalet Center has ambitious plans for further growth, including expansion of its operational reach to the West-Flanders region and possibly beyond the national borders. The robust, scalable IT infrastructure now supporting the organization’s success provides a solid fundament for the realization of its ambitions. Schulz feels the business can look forward in confidence: “We now have a secure, reliable system that is easily scalable to future growth. Plus, what is most important to me personally, it does not require my constant attention.”