Lightstream helps the bank optimize its MPLS network configuration, renegotiates vendor contracts, and saves the bank millions of dollars a year.
Business Challenge
As a large banking institution, the company serves customers at over 80 locations in seven states, all connected to the headquarters site in California via a multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) wide-area network (WAN). Each location has diverse-carrier, dual MPLS circuits for redundancy and load balancing.
When a new deputy CIO arrived at the company in 2018, he began looking for ways to improve service delivery and to lower operational costs. And he quickly zeroed in on the WAN.
At the time, the company had contracts for network services with AT&T, Lumen, Verizon, and Comcast. The IT team was holding four meetings a week—one with each provider—to review orders, discuss network issues, and get status updates. The deputy CIO felt this process was disjointed and inefficient and was causing savings opportunities to be overlooked.
The deputy CIO believed using an outside firm to review their network contracts could help the company get better pricing and save money. Having worked with Lightstream before, he had confidence in Lightstream’s technical expertise, so he brought the team in to review the bank’s network environment.
Solution
When Lightstream personnel engaged, their first action was to collect a complete inventory of the network. This included MPLS, dedicated internet access (DIA) connections, private lines, voice, POTS lines, broadband, and data center connectivity. The team pored over the bank’s invoices, compared charges with the circuit inventory from the carriers, and documented their findings.
The effort was immediately fruitful. Reviewing the invoices and comparing them against the inventory, the team checked expiration dates, flagging resources that were no longer being used but for which the bank was still paying. This optimization led to immediate cost savings.
With an accurate inventory, Lightstream then submitted requirements back to the vendors, revised quotes for services, and worked as a liaison between the bank’s IT team and the vendors to ensure the company received optimal pricing and contract terms.
Business Outcomes
Millions in Annual Network Cost Savings
By taking a broad view of network services and bringing in an objective perspective, Lightstream was able to find ways to save the company money. Lightstream reconciled billing issues and worked with the telecom companies to renegotiate contracts. This effort saved the company $3.5 million annually on one vendor contract and nearly $3 million another, resulting in almost $6.5 million in total annual network cost savings.
Single Point of Contact for Vendor Communication
Prior to Lightstream getting involved, vendor communication was a challenge. At the time, the company held separate meetings with each vendor. This was time-consuming and inefficient, and it often led to miscommunication between service providers.
Engaging Lightstream solved this problem. The company now holds only one meeting a week with Lightstream technicians to review all orders, discuss status updates, explore pricing concerns, and resolve disputes with their providers. Lightstream represents all vendors and acts as the single point of contact, simplifying communications for the company and providing an advocate to help the organization get the best services possible at the best rates.
Consolidated Dashboard View of Network Inventory
When Lightstream was engaged, the first step was to collect an accurate network inventory. This information was then loaded into Lightstream ConnectTM, an industry-leading proprietary inventory management system that stores all of a customer’s telecommunications inventory data and provides a dashboard-driven interface for access to the information.
Connect allows the bank’s IT team to get an accurate, consolidated view of all their network inventory, making it easier for them to manage their network installation and to track updates.
Next Steps
Like most organizations, the bank plans to migrate many of its IT systems to the public cloud. While some workloads have been migrated already, the majority of the company’s applications still run on infrastructure in on-premises data centers.
To assist this effort, Lightstream provides Cloud Managed Services to assist the bank in technical, financial, and security optimization of its cloud assets. Lightstream cloud experts, acting as an extension of the company’s AWS team, are analyzing the bank’s current cloud financials, identifying cloud resources and costs, and recommending optimization steps that will enable the company to buy resources at lower cost and save money.
Today, the company spends nearly $250,000 per month on cloud infrastructure; and that amount is growing. Although Lightstream’s optimization work has just begun and results are pending, early projections are that the company could save $400,000 to $500,000 on its cloud spend annually.
Contact Information
To learn more about how Lightstream Managed Services can help you reduce network costs and improve service delivery, visit www.lightstream.tech.
