United Living is a leading UK provider of refurbished and new build living solutions. With almost 110 years of experience, their construction projects regenerate communities, providing high quality housing and affordable living solutions up and down the country.

The company also aim to deliver a sustainable legacy and enhanced social value. They work with local authorities and their partners to deliver local employment, training and initiatives in the communities they serve. They are also a member of the Considerate Constructors Scheme and have achieved wide recognition for their focus on social responsibility.

During construction projects, United Living’s site staff regularly communicate with Head Office, send CAD drawings and access resources using mobile phone. Site teams are highly agile and often work on transient projects that can be wrapped up within 6 months.  

United Living were using a legacy Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) router solution for their broadband network, with leased lines of various bandwidth. This was being delivered over an ADSL network and worked well enough, but they had limited visibility of link performance and site connectivity. This made diagnosing issues problematic and they often had to wait a long time for customer support.

Another issue was the mobilisation of new sites. Installing leased lines takes 3-6 months and ADSL lines carry a 1-2-month lead time. When new projects were launched, site staff sometimes had to wait up to 3 months for acceptable connectivity. To support the fast-paced remote productivity and agility of their teams, United Living needed to utilise innovative broadband technology that would empower their people and ensure business continuity.

One of Bytes’ networking specialists knew that Citrix had recently released a cutting-edge SD-WAN appliance that could replace United Living’s MPLS solution. It had all the features needed to boost technological speed, performance and business productivity on their construction sites. It also offered a more cost-effective commercial model for the company.

Key features of SD-WAN include:

• Various carrier leased lines can be combined - ADSL, FTTC or 4G.
• Bonded links to ensure high bandwidth performance.
• RAG dashboards and diagnostic tools to identify downed or non-performant links.
• Continuous analysis of traffic flows across the WAN.
• QoS policies can be modified on demand to prioritise business-critical traffic.

United Living now have reliable, fast connectivity at project sites. Bonded and prioritised connections provide ample bandwidth, meaning their workforce can be productive on new sites from day one. Bandwidth prioritisation policies can also be changed quickly and easily on the fly – increasing agility.

Switching to Citrix SD-WAN has also given United Living full visibility and control of their network and Citrix ICA layer, with diagnostic tools available to help them fix issues swiftly in house. Moving away from long and inflexible MPLS contracts has also given them freedom of carrier choice. United Living have gained the speed and performance needed to digitally transform their business, continue their success and keep providing social value to UK communities.