Orange gives DELA greater insight into its network

For 10 years, Orange has been the network provider for funeral cooperative DELA. "With the acquisition of BKM, Orange now has an entire LAN product range too," says Nick Ryngaert, IT Infrastructure Manager at DELA. "Given our good experiences with them as a network provider, we also wanted to take advantage of this new product range."

Reduced grey area

Dieter Herbots, Solutions Architect at DELA, explains why it was important to have a network from Orange within the company walls as well: "The cabling from Orange used to come right up to the technical area. Then, if there was a network problem at a workstation, we had to figure out what the problem was, because there's still a lot of cabling between the workstation and the internet connection."

Orange now takes care of DELA's complete network connectivity, up to and including the WiFi network to which the workstations are connected. "The grey area for network problems has become smaller as a result," Herbots notes. "Now, if a problem arises at a workstation, we only have to deal with two parties. The workstation vendor is responsible for the proper operation of the Windows devices; Orange for the network."

Greater insight

The Cisco Meraki managed LAN that Orange has rolled out at DELA also provides greater insight into the quality of the network connections. "Since COVID-19, we've also been doing funerals via streaming," says Herbots. "Now, if there are complaints about the quality of the stream, we look at Meraki's dashboard. We can then immediately see where an access point has failed or which device is saturating the network."

Office 365 account as an access pass

Orange has also integrated the managed LAN at DELA with the employees' Office 365 accounts as a single sign-on. "With their Office 365 account, our employees can immediately connect to the network in all DELA departments," explains Herbots. "And if an employee leaves our organisation and we shut down their Office 365 account, that person can no longer access the network."

DELA uses two-factor authentication for secure access to its services by employees. But not all circumstances require the same level of security. "We're now exploring how to make access and associated security measures conditional," says Herbots. "Then, if an employee doesn't log in through DELA's network, we can mandate two-factor authentication. If the employee signs up on our own network, then that's a lower risk and we can omit the second factor."

Personal bond

"Orange has been our preferred supplier for some time, but this project has once again confirmed that we made the right choice," says Ryngaert about the collaboration. "Especially the Business Experts team that they provide, which is the main reason for us to keep choosing Orange. We've been working with the same people for years and that creates a personal bond. That's how they know our organisation so well. With Orange, we work with people, not with services."