Starkey swaps out MPLS for managed SD-WAN

Starkey, a global leader in hearing aid technology, is in the midst of implementing a cloud-first strategy aimed at improving customer interactions, boosting application performance, simplifying business processes and cutting costs. But there was one thing holding that effort back: the company’s rigid, expensive, legacy MPLS network.

Eric Hanson, CIO of the privately held company of more than 5,000 employees, explains that there were a number of factors driving Starkey to unplug its MPLS circuits that connected 29 global sites to corporate headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minn.

First, money was a driver. “The cost to value ratio was no longer valid,” said Hanson. “To get the bandwidth and response time we need for applications, MPLS would cost an inordinate amount of money.”

Second, Hanson wanted to lift the burden of having to manage telco relationships off his plate. “As long as I keep MPLS, I have to have my internal team manage it. I don’t want to focus on that, I want to focus on other activities that add value, that are more strategically aligned.”

Finally, a shift from MPLS to managed SD-WAN advances the company’s cloud-first strategy. It enables Hanson to stop backhauling application traffic to his core data center and to “leverage managed internet pipes to access cloud applications more effectively.”

He adds that the company is aggressively moving existing applications to the cloud and taking a cloud-first approach to new apps, with an ambitious goal of getting all applications out of the data center by 2026.

Choosing an SD-WAN vendor

Hanson had worked with Aryaka at his previous job, so he was familiar with the company and believed Aryaka would be a good fit for Starkey. He was also new to Starkey and didn’t want to come in and impose his decision on the team. 

He set up an evaluation process that included Aryaka and two competitors. In the end, the team agreed that Aryaka was the right partner to deploy SD-WAN at Starkey’s 29 global sites that include manufacturing facilities, warehousing and distribution, and sales offices, including some with repair and customer-service capabilities.

“Out of the gate we saw the value of not just having our network run through Aryaka, but also having them manage it for us,” Hanson said. “We wanted to rid ourselves of all that telco management, the stuff that wakes people up in the middle of the night.” Hanson said that Aryaka, with its global scale, could do a better job dealing directly with the telcos than he could.

So, Starkey did those two things together: it moved off MPLS and onto Aryaka’s managed SD-WAN service, plus signed on for Aryaka’s Last Mile Service, an add-on option that simplifies contract management and payment processing with ISP vendors. With Aryaka’s Last Mile Service, the vendor assumes responsibility for link procurement, deployment, monitoring, and responding to outages.

“They have full management, soup to nuts, of our WAN internet experience across all of our facilities,” said Hanson. This has enabled Starkey drop MPLS completely.

Implementing SD-WAN

The first step in implementing the Aryaka SD-WAN service was appropriately sizing the SD-WAN appliances and internet circuits for each location. A preconfigured appliance was then shipped to each location, where someone would literally “plug it in and turn it on,” said Hanson.

The process was so simple that at sites without an IT person, he was able to enlist someone from the business unit to handle the task. He adds that his team worked closely with Aryaka to make sure the cutover was seamless, and that the redundant features of the implementation were working. Because the SD-WAN appliances were preconfigured and are remotely managed, the cutover was smooth, said Hanson.

The rollout was implemented in stages, depending on the region. Some sites have been live for six months, others have been plugged in more recently. Hanson said his team has been tracking application performance and has measured improvements in the 5x to 10x range.

In addition, having redundancy at each site has boosted reliability of the network overall. “In the previous model, there was an MPLS line back to the data center and then internet for other things. Now we have two or more internet circuits at each site, with redundant appliances, so if an appliance or circuit goes down, it just fails over,” Hanson said. “We don’t have internet outages any more for our business, which is a really critical thing.”

The company is saving significant amounts of money by turning off those expensive MPLS links. And it is able to free up staffers to work on strategic projects rather than having them babysitting the WAN.

On a more strategic level, the Aryaka project is helping Starkey achieve its mission to “service our customers better than everyone,” Hanson said.

Starkey’s latest product innovation is its Genesis AI hearing aid, which features a new processor, improved sound quality, sleeker design, better comfort and longer battery life. In addition to developing and manufacturing digital hearing aids, Starkey is focused on every aspect of the business, including marketing, custom solutions, on-demand support, industry advocacy and continuing education.

“When we can provide a stable, high-performance environment for everything from bringing new products to market to shipping products to customer service, billing, receivables, all of those functions, that is absolutely part of our fulfilling our vision,” Hanson said.

Based on his prior experience with Aryaka, Hanson was confident that the transition to SD-WAN would go smoothly during all phases of the project, from planning to implementation to monitoring of the system once it was up and running.

“Yes, they have great technology, but their willingness to meet us where we’re at has been really the critical qualifier in continuing our relationship. Nothing is ever perfect; implementations are never perfect, relationships are never perfect, but they’ve always come across as, ‘We’ll do what’s right for you, we’ll make this right.’ And that’s really what you need from critical partners.”

Looking ahead to other possible technology projects, such as SSE or SASE, Hanson said those are being evaluated. “When we have specific use cases, we will look at these evolving models.”