A 5-country manufacturing group was paying £186k/year for a legacy MPLS network: a private leased-line network connecting their factories. Nobody had challenged the cost in years. The sites in France, Poland, India, and China were all paying premium rates for connectivity that could be replaced.
Diagram showing connectivity cost reduction from £186,000 per year on legacy MPLS to £28,000 per year on Ubiquiti SD-WAN across 16 manufacturing sites in 5 countries, an 85% cut.
The MPLS was still running. Still billing. Nobody had asked whether it was still needed because it had always been there.
The group had inherited an MPLS network: the kind of dedicated private network that made sense a decade ago when internet bandwidth was unreliable. By the time the audit happened, every site had reliable broadband. The MPLS was still running. Still billing. Nobody had asked whether it was still needed because it had always been there.
£186k/year across 16 sites. Factories in France, Poland, India, and China all on premium leased-line contracts. The cost had never been challenged because the network was never broken. “It works” and “it’s the right choice” are different questions, but nobody was asking the second one.
The engagement started with a full connectivity audit across all 16 sites: every contract, every circuit, bandwidth usage, and cost per site. That produced the complete picture that nobody had assembled before.
The case for SD-WAN (software-defined wide-area networking, which routes traffic over standard broadband instead of dedicated leased lines) was built as a formal business case with CEO sponsorship. Ubiquiti hardware was specified per site based on the bandwidth requirements uncovered in the audit.
Deployment was planned factory by factory so no site went dark during the cutover. Each location ran the new SD-WAN in parallel before the MPLS circuit was decommissioned. UK sites went first, then the rollout extended to France, Poland, India, and China.
Complete inventory across all 16 sites: current contracts, bandwidth usage, and cost per site. The audit built the business case and identified the savings available before a single piece of hardware was ordered.
Ubiquiti SD-WAN equipment specified and procured for each of the 16 sites based on bandwidth requirements from the audit. Hardware chosen for its price point and the group’s existing familiarity with the platform.
Site-by-site cutover with zero-downtime targets. UK sites first, then France, Poland, India, and China. Each location ran the SD-WAN in parallel before the MPLS circuit was decommissioned, with no business disruption at any stage.
Connectivity cost reduction: £186k/year down to £28k/year across all 16 sites and 5 countries
Saved annually on connectivity costs alone, documented and recurring from the point of migration completion
Sites migrated across the UK, France, Poland, India, and China with zero business disruption at any location
The MPLS network wasn’t broken. It worked fine. That’s why nobody questioned it. But “it works” and “it’s the right choice” are different questions. Legacy infrastructure costs compound because they’re invisible: they’ve always been on the budget, so they stay on the budget.
The audit asks the question nobody else is asking: “is this still the right way to do this?” In this case the answer was clearly no. The technology had moved on, the price differential was enormous, and the migration was straightforward once the decision was made. The barrier wasn’t technical. It was the absence of someone whose job it was to ask.
If you’re paying for connectivity or infrastructure that hasn’t been reviewed in years, have a chat with us. Costs nothing, no pitch, and we’ll tell you straight whether a closer look makes sense.
or ring us on 07754 218 688 any weekday