SimplePay Group Pty Ltd (SimplePay), a global payment processing services company, is using Riverbed SteelConnect as the backbone of a software-defined infrastructure to deliver the agility, security and flexibility required to scale its business globally.
SimplePay opened its doors in Sydney in 2012, quickly establishing itself as a leading payment processing company in Australia as a result of its market-leading bility to securely process large volumes of transactions across markets and currencies on a single platform. Its customers manage high volumes of transactions through parking meters, online shopping carts and unattended kiosks, from anywhere in the world.
Business Growth Hampered By Legacy Networks
As the company expanded to serve new customers across a range of industries and geographies, it became clear early on that its existing IT systems and networking infrastructure – while working fine locally - wouldn’t be able to keep up with the needs of a fast-growing, increasingly distributed operation. If SimplePay won new business in the U.S. for example, it would have taken months to provision the new site with cloud connectivity and access to the business-critical applications and services it would need to run.
Because every packet of data carries revenue, in looking for a new network solution, security was paramount to SimplePay, as was business agility, given it automates many elements of its business in order to keep head count low and run efficiently. The solution also needed to be easy to manage, and enable the company to leverage its existing Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud environment.
Application-Defined SD-WAN For The Cloud Era
SimplePay deployed Riverbed SteelConnect, a revolutionary SD-WAN solution that automates cloud connectivity for hybrid cloud environments. Developed to disrupt the ‘legacy’ network routing market, with the ability to replace thousands of manually configured routers with virtual network design based on zero-touch provisioning and easy change management, SteelConnect allows organizations to create a single, software-defined networking spanning hybrid WANs, cloud networks, and branch LAN/WLANs with a centralized cloud-centric management workflow, application-based orchestration, and integrated security.
For SimplePay,SteelConnect supplies the internal backbone connection between all of the virtual clouds SimplePay runs in AWS and provides a consistent and secure connection anywhere in the world. This enables it to deploy and connect new infrastructure anywhere in the world within minutes.
“We don’t have to worry about security or reliability; we now have a fully encrypted backbone that we’ve deployed using Riverbed at on- and off-ramp points,” said Rob Gillan, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), SimplePay Group. “It’s an environment that is almost unheard of - unmatched. There’s no truck roll, there’s no staff needed, it literally is one of the simplest deployments I’ve ever been involved in.”
“Unlike traditional switching and routing vendors who have built their business on delivering physical boxes to you, Riverbed has really embraced the software-defined networking model and they have a solution with SteelConnect that is easily deployable and absolutely reliable,” said Gillan.
SteelConnect has allowed SimplePay to run a private network between all of its sites, and easily talk to a server in the UK, Singapore or Australia just by typing a private IP address. With services running in the UK, UAE, and Australia, SimplePay also takes advantage of time zone differences, with transactions taking place in Australia running on an entirely available infrastructure.
“We could scale this to thousands of transactions a minute without even having any blip on the infrastructure, or any more cost. It’s globally replicated, so as soon as a transaction happens anywhere in the world, it’s automatically replicated into two other sites,” said Gillan.
“Cloud-first implementations demand a radically different approach to networking – one that’s agile, simple and works at the speed of business,” said Paul O’Farrell, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Riverbed’s SteelConnect, SteelHead, and SteelFusion business units. “Riverbed SteelConnect has given SimplePay a truly modernized network which has allowed the company to accelerate the growth of their business with a highly differentiated offering for their customers.”