Brasfield & Gorrie elevates construction site innovation nationwide with XR, drones and robots by standardizing on Aruba SD-Branch ensuring the movement of terabytes of data to deliver next-generation services to customers across the US.
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has announced that Brasfield & Gorrie, one of the nation’s largest privately-held construction firms based in Birmingham, Alabama, is standardizing on an end-to-end Aruba SD-Branch network.
The firm is deploying Aruba to connect its 12 offices and more than 200 active jobsites that it maintains at any given time, as well as the six locations of B&G Equipment and Supply. This provides its employees high-performance connectivity to critical applications while cutting circuit spending 50% by utilizing direct Internet access (DIA) versus multiprotocol label switching (MPLS).
At modern construction sites – where data, streaming, IoT and mobility play vital roles –Brasfield & Gorrie is delivering next-generation services that improve building integrity, increase efficiency and improve worker safety, while reducing costs, by deploying Aruba’s wired, wireless, SD-WAN and AI-powered management solutions.
“Aruba enables us to continue providing our customers with the latest in construction innovation,” explained Brad Hamilton, Director of IT Operations and Infrastructure for Brasfield & Gorrie.
“Whether it’s Virtual Reality (VR) for an immersive project experience, drones for automating inspections or layout robots for precisely marking the placement of walls and mechanical systems, our network supplies high-performance connectivity to every site.”
Our new SD-Branch infrastructure supplies us with reliable, flexible and scalable connectivity at our offices and job sites, whether in a rural area, with little communications backbone, or a highly developed urban area with ample circuits,” he added.
After decades using another vendor’s routing, wired and wireless infrastructure, Brasfield & Gorrie sought to simplify and streamline its networks to save on costs and reduce the complexity that causes burdensome IT overhead. After piloting Aruba at one of its offices, Brasfield & Gorrie decided to conduct a complete network refresh.
For its SD-Branch solution, Brasfield & Gorrie has deployed wireless solutions including six access points (APs) and high-performance branch gateways. On the wired side, the firm has implemented Aruba’s CX Series switches for the data center core along with access and aggregation switches.
For management, Brasfield & Gorrie is leveraging Aruba Central for unified and proactive cloud-based AIOps, management of APs, gateways and switches, as well as User Experience Insight (UXI) for hard-wired or Wi-Fi incident detection using AIOps to pinpoint issues that require immediate attention.
“Aruba’s solution is more advanced in terms of improved throughputs and policy-based management innovations, which reduces costs for hardware and IT resources,” Hamilton said. “Licensing is also significantly streamlined, adding considerable savings.”
Beyond deployment and licensing, Brasfield & Gorrie’s network has also proven more efficient to manage. “With Central and AIOps, we’re able to troubleshoot faster,” said Gerald Ennis, Senior Network Engineer. “In most instances we’ve saved 75% on troubleshooting time.”
Moving ahead, Brasfield & Gorrie looks forward to applying on-going networking innovations that will help make construction processes more automated and intelligent. This includes considering Aruba’s NetEdit for streamlining switch management and location services for providing real-time analytics that enable data-driven initiatives.
“We’re excited about our Aruba partnership and the possibilities for the future,” Hamilton said. “From product innovation to technical support, Aruba solutions are just plain better all around.”
