Headquartered in France, ENGIE is a global leader in low-carbon energy and services with more than 160,000 employees worldwide. ENGIE works to accelerate the transition towards a carbon-neutral world through reduced energy consumption and the advancement of more environmentally friendly solutions. With this global mission in its sights, ENGIE needed a network that embraced its strategy and vision to push toward digital solutions.

Launching a "Cloud First" initiative, ENGIE's strategy involved pushing all new applications to the cloud. In order to accomplish this goal, the company needed to implement the shortest data path between users and applications. Adrien Geniller, Lead Network Architect at ENGIE, had to evaluate where to place the routers. ENGIE had initially considered installing routers in their data centers, using a direct connection via VPN to reach applications. However, placing a router in its data center would create an additional hop between users and applications.

ENGIE was faced with the following challenges:

• Implementing the shortest data path between users and applications
• Determining where to place routers to ensure efficiency
• Reducing length of time to integrate new business acquisitions into their network
• Providing consistent performance to customers

Optimizing connectivity while providing investment protection

Keeping ENGIE's "Cloud First" strategy in mind, Cisco SD-WAN enabled using virtual routers in the cloud to link its domestic and partner networks to its applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and on-premises data centers. This solution allowed some applications to remain on-premises while utilizing Cisco on AWS for efficiency.

Cisco SD-WAN on AWS was the best choice because deploying virtual SD-WAN routers, was faster than using on-premises data centers and offered close locations to ENGIE sites worldwide. Cisco SD-WAN was ideal given its capabilities around multi-tenancy, security, application visibility, and zero-touch provisioning.

In addition, the company reduced the Internet segment they were using and AWS' global backbone provided the opportunity to do just that. A dedicated AWS Transit Gateway acts as an underlay between Cisco's virtual router and the firewall. Sites are connected to the ENGIE network via a central virtual router on AWS with a Cisco router in the data center.

Cisco SD-WAN enabled ENGIE to securely leverage AWS as a worldwide transit network.  The design that was used in the Dublin ENGIE office was simplified and replicated in four additional regions: Paris, United States, Bahrain, and Singapore.

"Cloud First" strategy results in savings and speed

By implementing Cisco SD-WAN on AWS, ENGIE saw more control,flexibility, and support and could keep network management in-house. They were able to reduce the amount of time it took to connect cloud applications and on-premises data centers to European hubsfrom 15 days to less than 1 week. Visibility for IT managers also increased allowing them to now have read access on the vManage console for their respective VPNs.

"Cisco SD-WAN enables us to securely leverage AWS as a worldwide transit network. The time to connect can be very fast ... reduced to the time to send the router to the remote site, which is less than a week."
-Adrien Geniller, Lead Network Architect, ENGIE

Cisco SD-WAN on AWS provided ENGIE with improved performance, increased visibility through vManage, and broadened underlay support capabilities across 4G, MPLS, and Internet connections along with the AWS backbone, supporting ENGIE's "Cloud First" strategic goals. Learn the entire ENGIE success story by replaying the How to secure and automate branch office connectivity to AWS with Cisco SD-WAN webinar.

Moving forward, ENGIE plans to adopt the latest integration announced by Cisco and AWS:  Cisco SD-WAN with AWS Transit Gateway Connect, which builds upon Cisco's existing AWS relationship to provide a tightly integrated solution with additional key benefits, like reduced costs using higher bandwidth connections, enhanced security, and increased visibility. The latest launch with AWS Transit Gateway Connect enables Cisco SD-WAN to significantly increase throughput up to 20x.

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