Jellis Craig, one of Melbourne’s leading real estate groups, turned to WatchGuard to ensure it could manage its entire infrastructure, allowing its IT team visibility down to a device level in each of the company’s office locations.
Established in 1991, Jellis Craig has grown to become one of Melbourne’s leading real estate groups. Operating from 28 offices across Victoria, the company has 750 staff and more than 350 sales consultants.
During recent years, Jellis Craig has expanded its operations through a strategy of acquisition. Each office is then supported by centralized operations, marketing and IT services.
The challenge
As the company’s network of offices has grown, the challenges faced by the Jellis Craig IT team have also increased. Each new office needs to be fully equipped with effective security measures and robust data links to ensure both business and client information remains protected at all times.
IT Team Head, Christian Marotta, said his company has been a user of WatchGuard technology for more than a decade. Prior to that time, the firm had relied on an ageing Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructure to connect each office to company headquarters.
“Back then, I could quickly see that deploying WatchGuard firewalls would allow me to remove the expensive legacy WAN connections,” he said. “These days, we are making use of fiber NBN connections which deliver much better performance and data speeds.”
Marotta says the challenge then became finding an efficient way to monitor and manage a quickly growing fleet of devices.
The fleet includes a WatchGuard Firebox M470 appliance in the headquarters equipped with WatchGuard Total Security Suite. This provides services including support for content filtering, intrusion prevention, application control and ransomware protection.
The network of offices uses a mix of WatchGuard Firebox M270 and M370 devices, depending on the number of staff at each location. WatchGuard AP325 Wi-Fi access points are also currently being rolled out to provide improved wireless LAN coverage in each office.
WatchGuard’s managed services partner, Greenlight, has been working with Jellis Craig for three years and assisting with equipment selection and purchasing. Prior to this, the real estate company had been a WatchGuard customer but served by reseller Solution Plus Australia which Greenlight acquired.
“Greenlight’s support has been very helpful,” said Marotta. “Its technical knowledge and speed of service has been second to none.”
Marotta said that, while the WatchGuard gear was working well for the company, the IT team realized it needed a more efficient way to manage it. “With just a small internal team and almost 30 different locations to cover, remote monitoring and management was really the only option for us,” he said.
The solution
After considering a range of options, the Jellis Craig IT team made the decision to deploy the WatchGuard Cloud management platform. This enables the team to manage all Wi-Fi access points through a single portal. WatchGuard Fireboxes are currently being managed through WatchGuard System Manager.
“In the next six to 12 months, as the capabilities of WatchGuard Cloud increase, we will be looking to use that for managing the firewalls as well,” said Marotta.
The benefits
With the firewalls, access points and management portals in place, Marotta says on-going management of the entire infrastructure is very straight forward. The portals allow the team visibility down to a device level in each of the office locations.
“We can see everything that’s connected to our Wi-Fi networks, the connection speed they are achieving, and the signal strength,” he said. “If someone calls us to report that their Wi-Fi network is running slowly, we can quickly jump on and determine what is causing the issue.”
Each WatchGuard firewall has a backup 4G dongle in place. This means that, if there is a fault or disruption to the Internet connection, traffic can be automatically routed over this alternative connection instead.
“Security is enhanced by the fact that we only have one Microsoft Active Directory instance for the entire company,” said Marotta. “In some offices there is nothing in place apart from the firewall and some access points. Our VPN connections also make working from and accessing head-office resources simple, reliable, and secure.”
Marotta said his internal team continues to undertake deployments of additional WatchGuard devices as required. Greenlight continues to provide support by supplying the devices and ensuring the internal team is fully briefed on technical developments in the market.
“They help us to decide which products best suit our requirements,” he said. “They also assist with deal registrations and ensuring we take advantage of the best trade-up and trade-in options as WatchGuard devices are upgraded.”
Marotta said he has also been impressed with the service offered directly by WatchGuard. He recently had to go through the process of equipping a new large two-level office with a Wi-Fi network and WatchGuard assisted by examining floor plans and determining the optimal location for each access point.
“Our future plans include setting up a virtual WatchGuard appliance on the AWS cloud platform,” he said. “We plan to move our head office infrastructure on to the cloud platform as part of our strategy to shift from on-prem equipment.”
Marotta said the company is not expecting its growth rate to slow, due to on-going strong demand for real estate services. “I expect both WatchGuard and Greenlight will continue to be valuable technology partners for Jellis Craig for many years to come,” he concludes.
Intelligent CIO asked Christian Marotta, IT Team Head, Jellis Craig, further questions to find out more about the implementation.
What were the main IT challenges you faced previously with so many different locations to cover?
Previous to rolling out a consistent WatchGuard infrastructure across our franchises we had a mismatch of hardware to manage, multiple platforms to monitor and inconsistent levels of security. This made it difficult to create our own cost effective and reliable branch office WAN/VPN.
How has WatchGuard helped you overcome these challenges?
By rolling out a consistent hardware setup and configuration across the group, the whole network is easy to manage, monitor and configure with the added benefit of having granular control over our Branch Office VPN and remote access for staff.
Why did you decide to deploy the WatchGuard Cloud management platform?
We started using the cloud management platform for management of our Wireless Access Points across our franchises. It is now easy to configure, manage and rollout devices to various offices and have the one platform for visibility on our wireless network, to see how it is performing and any connection issues. Cloud Management also keeps the firmware up-to-date on the devices.
As WatchGuard Cloud adds further functionality, we will begin to migrate our security appliances across to be managed from there. Currently it is only collecting log data and keeping the firewalls firmware up-to-date.
What degree of system visibility has WatchGuard provided you with?
A huge uplift from our previous firewalls was the ability to collect log data in a central location and be able to report across the group or at an individual franchise level. It is very easy to monitor our whole network, troubleshoot network issues, monitor our wireless network and ensure bandwidth usage adheres to our guaranteed and maximum levels for each policy. We also have email and Teams notifications direct to our support platform when there are any security risks, VPN dropouts, Internet connections failing and switching over to backup connections. Really anything we would like to enable the notifications for.
Are you happy with the level of security provided to you by WatchGuard?
We are currently very happy with the level of security provided by the Watchguard Firewalls and Wireless Access points we have rolled out. The notifications and granular level of control lets us manage the level of security required for each policy.
Why did you decide to choose WatchGuard over other vendors?
When reviewing other vendors, the balance of security, cost and ease of configuration and management were the three main drivers for selecting Watchguard as our hardware security partner for Jellis Craig.
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