The Challenge
TransEuropa operated a patchwork of MPLS circuits, IPsec tunnels, and local ISP breakouts across 280 sites in 14 countries. Each country had its own network team and tooling. Mean time to resolve cross-border incidents exceeded 8 hours, and adding a new warehouse took 12–16 weeks of lead time.
The board mandated a single, centrally managed WAN platform with predictable costs, sub-2-second application failover, and the ability to spin up a new site in under 5 days.
Our Approach
We designed a Fortinet SD-WAN fabric with dual-ISP active-active at every site, backed by a central FortiManager orchestration cluster. Key design decisions:
- Zero-touch provisioning — Pre-staged appliances with cloud-based bootstrap reduced site activation to 3 days
- Application-aware steering — WMS, TMS, and VoIP traffic pinned to the best-performing link with sub-second failover
- Regional internet breakout — Direct SaaS access at every hub site, eliminating backhaul to central data centres
- Integrated security — NGFW, IPS, and web filtering on every SD-WAN appliance (SASE-lite model)
Rollout was phased by region over 9 months, with parallel MPLS decommissioning trailing by 60 days per region.
The Outcome
All 280 sites migrated within 11 months — 2 months ahead of schedule. The centralised fabric gave the NOC a single pane of glass for the first time, and application performance improved measurably across every region.