F5

American Systems, a government services contractor, was tasked with developing and deploying a cloud-based version of its emergency notification system for the United States Air Force (USAF). The legacy Emergency Mass Notification System (EMNS) was reliable and secure, but required hardware installations at individual major commands and military bases, supporting approximately 700,000 users. The USAF realized that migrating the EMNS solution to the cloud could significantly reduce licensing, hardware, and maintenance costs, and make the system easier to scale and manage. However, the new cloud-based solution had to meet the stringent requirements of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Secure Cloud Computing Architecture (SCCA). American Systems lacked the internal expertise to meet these requirements and needed a partner to help them tackle the SCCA requirements.

Auckland Transport (AT) is responsible for the region’s transportation services, including buses, trains, ferries, roads, and related facilities. With public transport trips expected to double from 70 million per year in 2012 to 140 million by 2022, AT needed a modern transportation system that could seamlessly connect people, devices, and systems, offer enhanced safety, improve commuters’ travel experience, and reduce operational costs. AT also wanted to address the fast-changing consumer landscape, where commuters and citizens expect dramatically improved levels of service, usability of customer-facing platforms, accelerated response from organizations, and high availability of information related to traffic and transportation schedules. To achieve this, AT had to improve the integration of its transportation network using an integrated single-system approach while moving away from its legacy information technology systems to a cloud-based environment. The constantly evolving technology also changed the nature of the transportation business, with AT amassing large amounts of customer data, especially through their mobile applications: AT Mobile and AT Park. This meant that AT had to abide by regulatory frameworks, particularly the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Finally, AT also recognized the need to protect its systems from increasingly sophisticated and dangerous cyber-attacks that have the potential to disrupt its transportation network.

The Bangladesh Post Office, a public sector enterprise, was determined to support the ‘Digital Bangladesh’ initiative by launching a digital wallet for instant money transfer. The wallet was expected to cater to a wide audience, including individuals without bank accounts. The challenge was to develop a highly robust, feature-rich, and easy-to-use application that enables secure money transfers. The app was a late entrant to the space, competing against established e-wallet applications in Bangladesh, which meant it had to be designed and function seamlessly. The requirements of the application included 24/7 availability and high-level security. The Post Office needed a tool that could reroute incoming requests from Telecom operators to their app servers, improving the app usage experience. Given the financial applications of the tool, safeguarding the application was vital, requiring protection against application layer attacks, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, Bot traffic, and data breaches to steal user credentials.

PersonalizationMall.com, an online retailer, was facing challenges with its existing VPN solution. As more employees required remote access, the Cisco technology they were using no longer delivered acceptable performance. This was especially evident after the company migrated to Windows 7. Mobile users needed the 64‑bit operating system but were unable to connect to the VPN. Another concern was the slow connection speed between office and home, which was limited by the older VPN technology. Users were also experiencing difficulties with dropped calls on VoIP, which was frustrating and negatively affected the business.

Hobsons, an education solution provider, delivers a suite of education-oriented Software as a Service (SaaS)-based applications to colleges and universities. These include web-based course and career planning, recruiting, enrollment, and retention tools. The company's application delivery infrastructure is mission-critical, and it has to manage significant increases in web traffic that coincide with student application and enrollment deadlines. Hobsons also has to support a range of users, including prospective students completing online applications and administrators needing access to the same systems for recruitment efforts and application reviews. The company needed a solution that could easily direct different types of traffic to different pools of servers and manage users’ authorization and access to various applications, without requiring modifications or adjustments on the customer's end.