WiFi provider achieves twice the
capability at a quarter of the cost
Customer profile
The Cloud, a BSkyB company, ensures WiFi performance with content
filtering from SonicWall, while enjoying greater security, better scalability
and lower costs
Company
Industry
Country
Employees
Website
The Cloud
IT Services
United Kingdom
100
www.thecloud.net
Business need
As The Cloud’s business grew,
the content filtering it provided
to customers as part of its mobile WiFi service
offering needed to be upgraded. It was
becoming increasingly difficult to scale the
service, and performance was at risk.
Solution
The Cloud selected SonicWall Content
Filtering Service, which reduced upgrade
work by 75 percent and ensured cost-effective
WiFi service performance, delivering twice
the capability at a quarter of the cost. Also,
The Cloud now enjoys additional security
capabilities and more straightforward
CapEx forecasting.
Benefits
“The additional security capabilities that we could
use in the future at no additional cost made our
decision to purchase SonicWall very clear.”
Ian Bullock
Director of Operations
The Cloud
• Delivered time, effort and cost savings as a
result of a 75 percent reduction in
upgrades required
• Ensured performance of WiFi service, even
during high- usage surges
• Delivered twice the capability at a quarter
of the cost
• Enabled more straightforward
CapEx forecasting
Solutions at a glance
• Network security
“It would previously
have taken four
upgrades to scale
to the level that
SonicWall can
provide with one
upgrade. With this
75 percent reduction
in scaling steps, we
are making time,
effort and cost
savings.”
Ian Bullock
Director of Operations
The Cloud
The Cloud is a public access WiFi provider with thousands
of hotspots and millions of registered users across the UK
and continental Europe. It provides simple, fast and reliable
broadband for people away from home. Part of BSkyB since
February 2011, The Cloud’s customers include Network Rail,
Caffe Nero, Wagamama, PizzaExpress and Wetherspoon. The
service enables these brands to offer a WiFi service to their own
customers in their establishments. When needing to upgrade
its content filtering in the UK, The Cloud turned to SonicWall.
Scalable content filtering
was needed
As part of its managed WiFi service,
The Cloud provided content filtering
to its customers using a proxy-based
solution. This enabled its customers to
block access to inappropriate websites
from their WiFi hotspots. For instance, a
family-friendly restaurant would naturally
want to ensure that its customers were
prevented from accessing adult-only
sites whilst visiting their establishments.
Following BSkyB’s acquisition of The
Cloud and The Cloud’s subsequent
business growth, scalability was starting
to become a challenge. Although
the proxy-based solution met its
content filtering needs, in order to
prevent performance bottlenecks, The
Cloud needed to update the solution
frequently to increase its capacity. This
proved to be costly. The Cloud decided
to see if there was a more cost-effective
method of providing content filtering
to its customers that would still meet its
requirements to provide safe searches,
block websites and enable a list of
categories to be applied to the filter.
A reliable, flexible and scalable
content filtering service and nextgeneration firewall
The Cloud researched the market and
drew up a short list of three solutions
to consider, including the incumbent
solution. Another was SonicWall Content
Filtering Service (CFS), which enforces
2
protection and productivity policies, and
blocks inappropriate, unproductive and
illegal web content. CFS has a dynamic
rating and caching architecture, and
includes granular tools for creating and
applying web policies that allow or deny
users access to websites that contain
objectionable content. Because CFS is
configured and managed directly over
a firewall, organisations can strengthen
security and save money by eliminating
the need for a costly dedicated filtering
service.
As a growing business, The Cloud
also supplemented its SonicWall E-Class
Network Security Appliance
(NSA) firewalls with SonicWall
SuperMassive 9400 next-generation
firewalls in high availability (HA) mode.
These elegant, one-rack unit appliances
gracefully handle traffic spikes even
on the most demanding enterprise
networks, using a scalable, highdensity, multi-core, high-performance
Products & Services
Hardware
SonicWall SuperMassive 9400
firewalls
SonicWall E-Class NSA firewalls
Software
SonicWall Content Filtering
Service
architecture. “We needed a device that
would enable us to support our growing
number of end users,” explained Ian
Bullock, Director of Operations at The
Cloud. “The SuperMassive 9400s deliver
the performance we need. So far, we’re
using only 10 percent of the devices’
capacity, so we expect them to continue
to serve us perfectly for up to two years.”
The Cloud was drawn to SonicWall
because it offered more than content
filtering. “The other solutions we
considered offered only content
filtering,” commented Bullock. “The
additional security capabilities that we
could use in the future at no additional
cost made our decision to purchase
SonicWall very clear.” SonicWall also
proved to be the solution that would
scale with The Cloud’s fast-growing
business in the most economical way.
Once the solution was selected,
implementation was swift and
straightforward, and The Cloud
now provides content filtering to
its customers using SonicWall
SuperMassive 9400 firewalls running CFS.
More scalable content filtering
drives time, effort and cost savings
Scaling The Cloud’s content filtering
offering in line with its business growth
is now more straightforward and
therefore less costly. “It would previously
have taken four upgrades to scale to the
level that SonicWall can provide with one
upgrade,” explained Bullock.
“With this 75 percent reduction in scaling
steps, we are making time, effort and
cost savings. Plus, we are touching
the network less frequently, which has
reduced the impact on the service we
deliver to our customers.”
WiFi service maintained when
iPhone upgrade doubled
traffic volume
SonicWall’s patented method
of filtering web content ensures that
network connectivity — and therefore
performance — is maintained. “We
have to be prepared for peaks in traffic,
such as when big news stories break,
or during popular sporting events. The
recent iPhone iOS upgrade caused
traffic volumes to double,” explained
Bullock. “SonicWall CFS ensured that
our customers were prepared and able
to cope with surges in demand such as
these without their WiFi service being
impacted. Any impact on our customers’
business as a result of WiFi performance
dips would impact our business,
so it’s critical that performance levels
are maintained.”
Twice the capability at a quarter
of the cost
The Cloud is clear about the value
that SonicWall CFS has delivered to
the business. “In terms of ROI, we are
achieving twice the capability at
a quarter of the cost of our previous
solution,” noted Bullock.
The Cloud has also experienced an
unexpected benefit as a result of the
straightforward way that SonicWall
scales. “SonicWall provides us with
greater confidence in CapEx forecasting
than our previous solution,” added
Bullock.
View more case studies at www.sonicwall.com/casestudies
3
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Case Study-The Cloud-AMER-Metia-D1-pdf
“In terms of ROI, we
are achieving twice
the capability at a
quarter of the cost
of our previous
solution.”
Ian Bullock
Director of Operations
The Cloud