"SD-WAN has helped us improve our uptime to 99.7%"

The trick of making a good burger is not just the ingredients you put in, but how you stack them. No wonder then, Burger King India, a franchisee of the US-based Burger King Corporation, recently implemented Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) nail high-performance networking capabilities that streamline operations, increase business agility, and bolster security across their data centre and restaurant locations.

Incidentally, India is the 100th country where Burger King opened a restaurant, and it marks a footprint of over 330 locations throughout the country. A recent report from investment banking firm Kennis Ventures Private Limited highlights that it is on the heels of the leading brand McDonald's in the top burger chain in India. This sprawling business and the competitive field make it crucial for its internal network to work well for fast transactions, store visibility, secure guest Wi-Fi connectivity, and application availability. Wiping away latency or failure as a digital business enabler becomes as central as the softness of the bun in a burger.

So, would SD-WAN be the right ingredient in this stack that makes a complete burger? What issues and pickles would have to be handled here? Manoj Gupta, Associate Vice President IT, Burger King India replies in detail about the secret dip that makes it all come together in an interaction with Pratima Harigunani. Excerpts:

Tell us about the recent SD-WAN rollout and what triggered this decision.

Burger King has 330 restaurants spread across India, some of which are in tier 3 and 4 cities. An end-to-end online Burger King experience for millennials has defined the brand over the years. As a customer-centric strategy, user experience and resilient network connectivity to enhance business uptime drove us to look at refreshing our networking and security technologies.

The business was getting affected because of unreliable local Internet connectivity in locations like malls or other remote areas. Security became a major concern, as we had to depend on the service provider for secure connectivity, which was not adequate. Considering better uptime and network security, we sought a solution that could provide centralised network control, visibility and better performance.

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