WFS Relies on Accurate Visibility to Improve Service and Productivity
About Worldwide Flight Services
Since 1971, Worldwide Flight Services (WFS) has been growing its business into one of the world’s leading providers of ground handling services for airlines and airports, and today they serve more than 300 airlines and 195 airports on five continents. Their reputation has been built on assisting airlines and airports in growing their business based on the quality and reliability of WFS services and the expertise and professionalism of the WFS global team. Our case study focuses on WFS France which provides services through its offices located in Paris Charles De Gaulle, Orly and other French airports.
Challenge
WFS cargo operations and terminal management services are built on safety, security and punctuality. When teams throughout France began complaining that slow response time from critical applications were affecting their ability to meet SLAs and deliver high-quality service, WFS IT France and the Group CIO, began to investigate. Allot was called in by system integrator RSM Consulting and solutions distributor Miel after their incumbent technology provider was unable to find the root cause.
We had three important goals:
- Address the congested network
- Guarantee QoS for remote sites and for business-critical applications
- Improve overall QoE without adding more bandwidth capacity
Solution
Allot started by providing granular, Layer-7 visibility through the deployment of Allot Service Gateways, to find the culprits of the congestion. Our results surprised the in-house IT team:
- 33% of the WAN traffic was generated by remote endpoints synchronizing MS Windows and Office 365 files, including an old XP workstation that was not optimized for Office 365 downloads.
- Microsoft SMB File Sharing and desktop anti-virus updates were also consuming valuable WAN bandwidth.
- VPN applications were being used to bypass the local proxy and hide recreational Internet activity.
“When we looked at our network traffic through Allot’s visibility dashboards, it was eye-opening,” said Toufik Ouanaïm, IT France Manager and David Le Clei, Network Architecture at WFS. “For the first time ever, we got a truly accurate view of application and user behavior on our LAN, WAN and Internet links”.
Armed with fresh insight and Allot’s powerful policy toolset, WFS implemented QoS policy that guarantees minimum bandwidth to critical applications. Even during congestion spikes, the policy assures performance and user Quality of Experience across their entire network. The team at WFS also applied rate-limiting to SMB File Sharing and anti-virus updates so these downloads can carry on the in the background without hogging available bandwidth.
WFS also activated DDoS Secure in their Allot Secure Service Gateway platforms to protect firewalls and routers from inbound and outbound flooding attacks and to contain the activity of bot-infected hosts on the network. WFS have also freed up Internet bandwidth capacity and minimized productivity distractions in the workplace by replacing their open-source web filtering solution with Allot’s proxy secure web gateway. Allot’s full support for MS Active Directory enables seamless integration with the company’s domain controller, allowing WFS to implement content filtering per user or user-group. Allot’s proxy secure web gateway also protects all users from malware threats.
Benefits
Using Allot visibility, security and control solutions WFS are now able to:
- Assure application performance and user QoE for remote sitesWFS is now able to see and control critical Cargo Application and Office 365 performance for each of the service sites.
- Reduce bandwidth costsBy prioritizing business critical applications and rate-limiting others, WFS reduced bandwidth from 10 Mbps to 6 Mbps on one of their busiest WAN links, saving significant costs. This success will be duplicated on all WAN links.
- Enhance business productivityAbility to enforce Acceptable Use Policy per user profile lets WFS reduce recreational Internet use and other productivity distractions without over-blocking.
- Maintain their reputation for excellent service and customer satisfactionImproved network efficiency and application performance helps WFS meet customer expectations for service safety, security and punctuality.
- Troubleshoot fasterQuickly identify and fix problems from a central console, before they impact business productivity and service quality. No need for remote site visits to capture data for analysis.
