Case Studies

Platform

W H Y G R I D I R O N

SaaS Automation Platform

Automation should be simple to bring value. Gridiron's platform brings automation to everyone.

Automation done right

Gridiron is a network and system change implementation tool and automated troubleshooting application created by EGA Tech Ltd, a UK-based network DevOps and Automation company. Gridiron has the following components:

Provisioning: the initial build of the equipment
Configuration Management: ongoing changes
Troubleshooting: finding and fixing issues
Decommissioning: shutting down obsolete equipment
Location-agnostic: it can deploy to both on-premises and cloud locations

Click on the links for real-life case studies that show Gridiron in action.

Automated Hotel WiFi & Broadband Deployment

A major hotel chain used GridIron to rebuild their Wi-Fi networks in 700 locations and connect them to new ADSL Broadband circuits. It was essential to maintain customer connectivity throughout.

Challenge

To rebuild the Wi-Fi networks and connect them to new ADSL Broadband circuits traditionally required an engineer to be on-site with a laptop and network connection. With over 700 sites to cover, this would take at least half a year.

Additionally, the engineer would have to manually type in lots of configuration information to configure a minimum of four devices per site (e.g. two switches, one firewall and one router). This would have taken hours per site with higher margins of (human) error.

Solution

We used an early version of the GridIron Automation platform to automate the remote configuration of the devices on each of the 700 hotel sites. What should have taken an engineer approximately four hours per site (excluding travel time to each location) was now done remotely in the space of half an hour per site.

Results

Thanks to GridIron, all 700 hotel venues were deployed within a speedy two months.
Disruption to the Wi-Fi network was kept to a minimum on each site.
The hotel chain’s employees and customers could enjoy the benefits of the upgraded Wi-Fi network much faster.

Faster troubleshooting with automated information gathering

One of the UK’s top 4 Wi-Fi providers used GridIron on their vast network to speed up troubleshooting and boost network performance.

Challenge

To ensure the highest levels of network performance, one of the UK’s top four Wi-Fi providers needed to find a faster way to troubleshoot network issues.

The sheer vastness of the network and the multiple vendors and technologies used on the network meant that fact-finding during issues could take an engineer half an hour. This is before they could even start thinking about the best way to fix the issue, let alone implement the necessary changes.

Solution

We used the troubleshooting component of the GirdIron Automation platform to automate information gathering across the network. The platform also provided recommended next steps based on the troubleshooting information fed back through the platform.

Results

GridIron’s automated process reduced the overall information-gathering time to one minute.
The manual effort to raise changes was reduced from 5 minutes to 15 seconds.
As a bonus, the company could harmonise various automation scripts into one platform, resulting in a more streamlined and efficient troubleshooting process and much-improved network performance.

Extensive Lifecycle Management

Gridiron doesn’t care about vendor types: it is ‘vendor-agnostic’ and can deploy physical and virtual devices onsite and in the cloud.

It follows network automation best practices and can build virtual machines on Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure.

It can build routing, switching and firewall devices such as Cisco, Juniper, Zyxel, Meraki and more.

Quick device access and deployment

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Clean graphics and dashboards

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Dynamic network diagrams and documentation

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Automated event streaming and testing

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Getting Onboarded

Want to use Gridiron without delay?

Contact us using the forms on this website and a consultant will be in touch to discuss your specific business and technical requirements.

After this initial call an implementation spec and relevant pricing will be sent for agreement.

Upon agreement, Gridiron can be installed on-premises or in the cloud.

You can be up and running with a full implementation in an hour, with on-premises, vMWare, AWS, Azure or GCP automation all set up and working.

Scaleable

Whether its a small IT team stretched to its limits, or a large multi-national struggling to keep pace with change, Gridiron is well suited.

Quick Deployment

Get Gridiron implemented and your staff trained on using Gridiron all in a single afternoon. Yes, we have done just that a number of times for organisations like yours.

Secure

Security and automation must go hand in hand, so a prioritised aspect of every Gridiron build is its security footprint and each server is pen-tested continuously.

Flexible automation software with over 700 deployment templates.

As well as providing the software platform, we supply over 700 tested and approved templates that your teams can use immediately to start managing devices.

Our platform was developed by a combination of system, network, security and CICD experts. This means it is build for the development and support cycles typical of modern IT environments - ranging from SMEs to large multi-national companies with critical security requirements and infrastructure.