AI-native network amplifies multidiscipline engineering business

As part of a business restructure and rebrand, Agilitus needed to refresh its IT infrastructure. It wanted to upgrade the network at its Perth headquarters and standardize the network across its Western Australian offices while considering its East Coast expansion.

“We wanted to set a future-proof network standard for our offices as our business continues to successfully grow, so our systems expand with us seamlessly,” said Matt Adams, Head of ICT at Agilitus.

The wired network was the immediate priority. “We had to manage each switch individually,” said Adams. “Making changes in six locations required planning time to reduce possible human error and inconsistency.” The wireless LAN refresh was planned for the following year.

A cloud-native network with centralized management and end-to-end visibility to simplify IT operations was also a priority. Agilitus wanted a solution that would provide investment protection and offer secure Wi-Fi to clients working from its offices.

Cloud-native was on the requirements list, but AI-native was not—until Adams saw the Mist platform and the Marvis® AI engine in action. After running a Mist proof-of-concept (POC), Agilitus decided to upgrade its wired networks and fast-track the wireless LAN refresh.

“During our evaluation, we asked one of our clients to demonstrate their Mist environment,” said Adams. “While he was showing us Mist, Marvis® AI Assistant showed him an issue with one of their DHCP servers. We were blown away by how quickly he could triage and find the root cause of the issue.”

Mist leverages more than a decade of high-quality data and AI learning to assure that every connection is reliable, measurable, and secure for every device, user, application, and asset at every location. For Agilitus, the result is transformational scale and agility, simplified network operations, and exceptional user experiences.

Mist delivers network performance, empowering employees to focus on innovative technical solutions for minerals processing, green energy, ports, water and wastewater, and other critical infrastructure projects. The IT team is freed up to focus on strategic work.

“By standardizing on Mist, we can scale our network with ease—whether it’s to support our growth or a new project office,” said Adams. “We simply adjust the model in the Mist portal and rapidly deploy a new network anywhere we need.”

 Superior user experiences from calls to CAD
“We’ve seen dramatic improvement in Wi-Fi performance,” said Adams. He notes that the network has plenty of capacity to handle 3D modelling and other bandwidthintensive engineering, design, and construction applications.

 Zero Trust network access for guest and BYOD devices
Juniper Access Assurance has transformed the guest, BYOD, and IoT device access experience. Zero Trust network access policies are enforced based on user and device identities while cloud-hosted authentication simplifies IT operations.

“Access Assurance has been seamless for employees’ personal devices and our clients who need to access Wi-Fi from our locations,” said Adams. “We have better visibility into who has guest access, and the guest Wi-Fi password is no longer posted all over the offices.”

 Marvis AI empowers network operators
“The simplicity of the Mist solution is key,” said Adams. “Our support team can now handle the initial troubleshooting from the Mist portal.”

“Before, everything was console-driven, so they had to escalate issues straight to the network engineer with no ability to triage. With Marvis AI Assistant, the support team has tools to identify common issues, which lightens the load on our network engineer. It’s been fabulous.”

Adams noted that Marvis AI Assistant has identified issues with faulty cables and flaky docking stations—problems that had previously gone unreported to IT.