Software-defined networking services from Kyndryl and Cisco enable service innovation

This media company could no longer trust its networking infrastructure to carry its many mission-critical services with sufficiently high levels of availability. At the same time, as digital tools play an increasingly crucial role in the company’s development of new products and services, the corporate network began to pose a roadblock to innovation.

With the company’s switches approaching end-of-support status, the team set aggressive deadlines for a network upgrade project. The company couldn’t risk losing access to essential communications technologies such as phone, voice-over-IP, and Microsoft Exchange email servers, as well as services for the company’s broadcast teams like scheduling and archiving systems. If any of these systems went offline unexpectedly, the company’s business would be negatively impacted. So a switchover with zero disruption was a fundamental requirement.

Considering the stakes of selecting the right solution, the company explored a number of IT vendors and delivery areas before engaging Kyndryl for the project.

Selecting the right partners

In the end, the company selected Kyndryl for the clarity of its proposed networking architecture and a compelling roadmap for the current implementation and beyond. Kyndryl brought expertise from hundreds of similar networking projects, and maintained a strategic alliance with Cisco, the company’s preferred infrastructure vendor.

The company worked with Kyndryl and Cisco to assess existing networking infrastructure and map out the optimal upgrade path, leading to the deployment of Cisco Catalyst 9300 and Cisco Nexus 9300-EX Series switches, with Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) to accelerate and simplify management and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) to facilitate network automation.

The Kyndryl team worked side by side with the company, painstakingly testing the new network infrastructure and performing a gradual, phased deployment. With this diligent approach to testing and timely support and guidance from the Kyndryl and Cisco teams, the company successfully made the transition to next-generation network infrastructure without any disruption in business operations.

Future-proofing the network

By replacing the company’s existing networking environment with next-generation Cisco Catalyst 9300 and Cisco Nexus 9300-EX Series Switches, the Kyndryl team created a future-ready platform to support service innovation in the years ahead. The new network is powered by powered by the open, extensible, and software-driven Cisco ACI, allowing the company to more than double bandwidth, realize a 32% increase in availability, and slash latency by 40%.

Building on their strategic alliance with Cisco, the Kyndryl Network and Edge team helped the media company move to a performant, scalable, and highly available network architecture that will support the ongoing evolution of the company’s digital services for the next decade.

Unlocking the benefits of automation

By moving to Cisco switches that support Cisco DNA and Cisco ACI, the company aims to harness automation driven by machine learning to reduce the time and manual effort required to manage, monitor, and scale the network while driving visibility into network status and overall health. And because of the strategic alliance between Kyndryl and Cisco, the company never needs to go back and forth to validate high-level architecture designs or hardware configurations.