Success Stories

Our consultants have been leading and contributing in a series of projects. The following list provides the high-lights from our projects during the last five years.

Public Cloud Networking (2020-22)

Customer: German Financial Institution

Project: Public Cloud Initiative

Deliverables:

  • High-Level Design
  • Low-Level Design
  • Workshops and Knowledge Transfer
  • Lab Testing

Activities

  • Analysis and documentation of customer requirements
  • Analysis and documentation of integration of customer, cloud connect service layer, and cloud service provider
  • Analysis of integration options of Cisco ACI and cloud connect
  • Interaction with public cloud service providers and cloud connect service providers
  • Develop and present design options in customer workshops
  • Drive design and technology decision process in customer workshops
  • Document design
  • Researching and piloting various AWS networking solutions

  • Leverage of tools Terraform, AWS CLI, and AWS Console

Domains

  • Public Cloud Services: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
  • Routing
  • Forwarding and encapsulation
  • Security: Zoning, Network Layer Encryption, Transport Layer Encryption
  • Redundancy
  • Automation

Products: AWS, Equinix, DE-CIX, Terraform, AWS CLI, Cisco networking, AWS networking

Role: Consultant 

High-Level Design (2020)

Customer: Services Provider handling Sensitive Data, Communications and Infrastructures

Project: ACI data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverables:

  • Customer workshops
  • High-level design document

Activities

  • Develop design options along with trade off analyses
  • Present design options and trade off analyses in customer workshops
  • Drive design and technology decision process
  • Workshop preparation and documentation
  • Document design

Domains

  • Large switched network
  • Infrastructure virtualization
  • Application networking services: multi-vendor firewalls and F5 server-load balancing
  • ACI design is network-centric to support swift migration

Challenges

  • High degree of segmentation
  • Large amount of firewalls
  • Firewalls provide default gateway functionality 

Customer Requirements Acquisition and Interviews (2019)

Customer: Services Provider handling sensitive data, communications and infrastructures

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverables

  • Interview questionnaires
  • Interview protocols

Activities

  • Define scope and interviewee roles for interviews
  • Interview preparation through questionnaire generation
  • Protocol interviews

Domains

  • Applicable guidelines, regulations, and decisions
  • Development, test, integration
  • IT-security and segmentation
  • Automation
  • Client Services
  • Data center networks
  • Data center network operations
  • Server virtualization
  • Cloud services
  • Production services 

Network Data Analysis using Splunk (2019)

Customer: German Public Sector Customer

Project: Next Generation Network Operations

Deliverables

  • Network and Network Data Discovery
  • Splunk Dashboards and Apps

Activities

  • Investigate and analyze data sources
  • Investigate and propose possible metrics representing network health
  • Investigate and propose possible mechanisms for detecting security violations
  • Investigate and propose possible reports, dashboard
  • Present results to customer
  • Implement Splunk dashboards and apps

Technologies: Layer-2/3 networking, network security, data analysis, programming

Products: Cisco networking products (including Catalyst, Nexus, ASA), Splunk Enterprise, Splunk SPL, Python, Python SDK for Splunk

Role: Consultants

Migration Strategy (2018)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Data center transition to SDN

Deliverables

  • Plan and conduct customer workshops to agree on migration strategy
  • Migration strategy document
  • Network current state analysis

Activities

  • Identify migration steps under the aspects of complexity, down time and opportunities for automation
  • Identify and describe impact of individual steps
  • Create associated textual description of migration steps, including detailed logical and physical topologies
  • Automation of documentation where possible
  • Identify and describe rollback options
  • Creation of Python pseudo-code for automation of migration
  • Create parametrization data for implementation and migration
  • Customize automated network current state analysis to provide input for automation of migration
  • Leverage automated network current state analysis for network sanity checks
  • Automated creation of ACI policies
  • Validation of aforementioned procedures in the lab

Challenges

  • Ongoing operational changes in the customer network which are not related to this track
  • Mix of CIsco classic network switching technologies (Catalyst IOS and Nexis OS) and Cisco ACI

Technologies: Hybrid Layer-2/3 overlays, MEC, layer-2/3 data center networking, server-load balancing, device virtualization, multicast, QoS

Products: Cisco ACI Multi-PoD, Cisco vPC, Cisco Nexus and NX-OS, Cisco Catalyst and CatOS, Cisco VDC, Python, Python SDK for Cisco ACI

Role: Managing consultants

Low-Level Design (2018)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Data center transition to SDN

Deliverables

  • Plan and conduct customer workshops to agree on design details
  • Low-level design document
  • Connectivity data base

Activities

  • Identify necessary features and their characteristics
  • Describe best practices
  • Create detailed logical and physical topologies
  • Create detailed connectivity matrix
  • Create parametrization data for implementation and migration
  • IP addressing plan creation
  • naming scheme creation
  • maintaining connectvity data base

Challenges

  • Ongoing design changes in the customer network which are not related to this track
  • Ongoing operational changes in the customer network

Technologies: Layer-2 overlays, MEC, layer-2/3 data center networking, server-load balancing, device virtualization, multicast, QoS, programming

Products: Cisco ACI Multi-PoD, Cisco vPC, Cisco Nexus and NX-OS, Cisco Catalyst and CatOS, Cisco VDC, Python, Python SDK for Cisco ACI, Sphinx.

Role: Managing consultants

High-Level Design (2018)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Data center transition to SDN

Deliverables

  • Customer workshops
  • Combined data center customer requirements document and high-level design document

Activities

  • Document customer requirements
  • Develop and present design options in customer workshops
  • Drive design and technology decision process in customer workshops
  • Document design

Domains

  • Metro virtual data center
  • Data center interconnect
  • Large switched network
  • Infrastructure virtualization
  • Application networking services

Challenges

  • Number of co-located data centers: four
  • Large scale: 30K MAC-Addresses, 500 VLANs, 16K STP logical ports

Role: Managing consultants

Data Center Network Strategy (2018)

Customer: Public Sector IT Service Provider

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverable: Data center networking strategy document

Activities

  • Plan and conduct customer workshops to agree on methodology and scope
  • Propose and find consensus on strategy themes
  • Agree on viewpoints
  • Draft position statements and consensus finding
  • Elaborate on viewpoints, position statements, dependencies, impact, and risk per theme
  • Documentation

Domains

  • Software-defined networking
  • Segmentation
  • Operations and management

Role: Managing consultants

Customer Requirements Acquisition and Interviews (2017)

Customer: Public Sector IT Service Provider

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverables

  • Interview questionnaires
  • Interview protocols

Activities

  • Define scope and interviewee roles for interviews
  • Interview preparation through questionnaire generation
  • Protocol interviews
  • Generate summary document

Domains

  • Management
  • Enterprise architecture
  • Cloud piloting
  • Storage management
  • Server operations virtualization
  • Data center roles, operational continuity, and disaster recovery
  • IT security
  • Server operations
  • Segmentation
  • IP address management
  • Data center infrastructures and facilities operations

Role: Managing consultants

Migration Planning (2017/2018)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverables

  • Migration planning document
  • Migration Scripts
  • Robot framework configurations

Activities

  • Describe and plan migration steps which require manual acitivities
  • Coding of scripts for migration steps which can be automated
  • Configuration of Robot framework

Challenges

  • Ongoing design changes in the customer network which are not related to this track
  • Ongoing operational changes in the customer network

Products: Ansible, Python, Robot

Roles

  • Managing consultants
  • Software Engineers

Migration Strategy (2017/2018)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverable: Migration strategy document

Activities

  • Breakdown of migration into most granular steps
  • Determine impact of each individual step
  • Classify into manual steps vs. steps that can be automated
  • Define migration strategy considering downtime, rollback options, and efficiency
  • Estimate migration windows sizes

Challenges

  • Ongoing design changes in the customer network which are not related to this track
  • Ongoing operational changes in the customer network

Technologies: Layer-2 overlays, MEC, IPv6, layer-2/3 data center networking, server-load balancing, device virtualization

Products: Cisco OTV, Cisco vPC, Cisco ACI, Cisco Nexus and NX-OS, Cisco Catalyst and CatOS, Cisco VDC

Role: Managing consultants

Implementation Plan (2017)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Activities

  • Coding of scripts for current state analysis
  • Coding of scripts for device configuration generation
  • Review of implementation plan

Products: Python, Ansible, Robot

Roles

  • Managing consultants
  • Reviewers

Low-Level Design (2017)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverables

  • Plan and conduct customer workshops to agree on design details
  • Low-level design document
  • Connectivity matrix

Activities

  • Identify necessary features and their characteristics
  • Describe best practices
  • Create detailed logical and physical topologies
  • Create detailed connectivity matrix
  • Create parametrization data for implementation and migration

Challenges

  • Ongoing design changes in the customer network which are not related to this track
  • Ongoing operational changes in the customer network

Technologies: Layer-2 overlays, MEC, IPv6, layer-2/3 data center networking, server-load balancing, device virtualization

Products: Cisco OTV, Cisco vPC, Cisco ACI, Cisco Nexus and NX-OS, Cisco Catalyst and CatOS, Cisco VDC

Role: Managing consultants

High-Level Design (2016/2017)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverables

  • Plan and conduct customer workshops to agree on design
  • High-level design document

Activities

  • Develop and present design options
  • Drive design and technology decision process
  • Evaluation of DCI technologies: Cisco OTV, Cisco FabricPath, MEC, EoMPLS, VPLS, VXLAN, Cisco ACI

Domains

  • Metro virtual data center
  • Data center interconnect
  • Large switched network
  • Infrastructure virtualization
  • Application networking services

Challenges

  • Number of co-located data centers: four
  • Large scale: 30K MAC-Addresses, 500 VLANs, 16K STP logical ports

Role: Managing consultants

Acquisition and Management of Requirements (2016)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverable: Customer requirements document

Activities

  • Analysis of existing engineering documents
  • Reverse engineering of existing configurations
  • Interviews with customer stakeholders
  • Documentation of requirements in customer requirements document

Role: Managing consultants

Data Center Architecture (2016)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Private cloud transformation

Deliverable: Data center architecture document

Activities

  • Plan and conduct customer workshops to drive architecture decisions
  • Evaluation of technologies
  • Generate architecture document
  • Executive level presentations

Domains

  • Network infrastructure
  • Infrastructure security
  • Server virtualization
  • Container computing and networking
  • Cloud architectures
  • Segmentation
  • High-availability and operational Continuity
  • Network automation and integration into container networking and virtualization

Role: Managing consultants

Customer Requirements Acquisition and Interviews (2016)

Customer: Large German Customer

Project: Private cloud transformation

Deliverables

  • Interview questionnaires
  • Interview protocols
  • Requirements Documents

Activities

  • Define scope and interviewee roles for interviews
  • Interview preparation through questionnaire generation
  • Protocol interviews
  • Generate customer requirements document

Domains

  • Network engineering and operations
  • IP services
  • Network architecture
  • Segmentation
  • Application architectures
  • Architectures converged systems
  • Management private cloud project
  • Archiving
  • Storage Operations
  • Data center infrastructures and facilities operations
  • Automation

Role: Managing consultants

Data Center Network Strategy (2016/2017)

Customer: German Financial Institution

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverable: Data center networking strategy document

Activities

  • Proposal and consensus on methodology and structure
  • Propose and find consensus on strategy themes
  • Elaborate on drivers and criteria, position statements, dependencies, impact, and risk per theme
  • Documentation
  • Executive level presentation

Domains

  • Software-defined networking
  • Segmentation
  • IPv6
  • External connectivity
  • High-availability and operational continuity
  • Management and operations

Role: Managing consultants

WAN Acceleration Design and Implementation (2015/2016)

Customer: German Healthcare Institution

Project: WAN acceleration solution

Deliverables

  • Cisco WAAS design
  • Implementation support

Activities

  • Requirements acquisition and documentation
  • Evaluation of integration methods for data center and branches
  • Comparison of interception and load-balancing methods
  • Design workshops
  • Design documentation
  • Implementation support

Domains

  • WAN acceleration
  • High-availability
  • WAN and data center networking

Challenge: Challenging existing network design

Technologies: TCP/IP, Layer-2 networking

Products: Cisco WAAS, VMware ESXi, Cisco vWAAS, Cisco AppNav-XE, Cisco ISR4K, Cisco UCS-E, Cisco WAVE appliances

Role: Managing consultants

WAN Acceleration Design and Implementation (2014/2015)

Customer: German lighting manufacturer

Project: WAN acceleration solution

Deliverables

  • Cisco WAAS design
  • Implementation support

Activities

  • Requirements acquisition and documentation
  • Evaluation of integration methods for data center and branches
  • Comparison of interception and load-balancing methods
  • Design workshops
  • Design documentation
  • Implementation support

Domains

  • WAN acceleration
  • High-availability
  • WAN and data center networking

Technologies: TCP/IP, Layer-2 networking

Products: Cisco WAAS, Cisco AppNav appliances, Cisco WAVE appliances

Role: Managing consultants

Data Center Network Infrastructure High-Level Design (2014)

Customer: Dutch Cable Provider

Project: Data center re-design and technology refresh

Deliverable: Data Center High-Level Design Document

Activities

  • Customer Workshops
  • Evaluation of technologies: complexity, maturity, stability, security, risks
  • Evaluation of DCI technologies
  • Documentation of design

Domains

  • Next-generation data center infrastructure
  • E2E multi-site DC architecture
  • Multi-tenancy
  • Segmentation

Technologies: DCI: OTV, FabricPath, vPC, VPLS, Direct, Layer-2/3 networking, Fex-based Access Layer Design for rack mount servers, Blade Center Integration

Product: Cisco Nexus 5000

Role: Managing consultants

Data Center Network Infrastructure High-Level Design (2013)

Customer: Dutch Cable Provider

Project: Data center security architecture

Deliverable: Data Center High-Level Security Architecture

Activities

  • Customer Workshops
  • Interviews of stake holders over a period of 6 weeks
  • Documentation of requirements
  • Creation and documentation of infrastructure security architecture framework
  • Creation and documentation of infrastructure security architecture
  • Documentation and presentations

Domains

  • Infrastructure security
  • Infrastructure virtualization
  • Application and data architectures
  • Network segmentation