A construction supplier partners to get reliable, secure connectivity — even on remote sites

Customer Spotlight

When Jorge Salem joined construction materials supplier CAPA as their IT manager, he immediately saw the need for overhauling their digital infrastructure. The company used T1 coax internet service to connect to a VPN providing access to all systems and software. This legacy solution lacked sufficient bandwidth, was not secure, and couldn’t easily or cost-efficiently scale to service new facilities and new job sites. Salem knew that it was time for a change, if the company wanted to continue to grow.

“We had a lot of problems with transmitting data back and forth between locations,” Salem says. “It felt like we had issues at a different location every week. Sometimes we even lost critical data.”

CAPA has mining and excavation sites with mobile office trailers which are often moved to support different projects. Their fleet goes anywhere — no matter how remote. They mine, transport, pour or lay materials including gravel, ready-mix concrete, asphalt and pipe across the rugged 4,244 square-mile Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Each new location presents unique challenges, requiring secure connectivity to support security cameras, remote time clocks, and CAPA’s fleet management system. That management system communicates when trucks are close to being full so that an empty truck can be sent to the site and keep production running without interruption.

Public internet connectivity lacked the security needed

CAPA had been using wireless hot spots to support these remote locations, but the public internet connectivity lacked the security Salem required. Because CAPA needs to move the trailers and trucks every time a project ends, Salem demanded a secure solution that could easily follow the trailers to their new work sites.

He needed a partner that offered modern technology solutions that could provide reliable connectivity everywhere they needed it, and easily scalable to support whatever they needed to do. He found it all with Spectrum Enterprise — along with a partnership he could build on. 

After discussing his needs and weighing different options with Spectrum Enterprise account manager David Hardin and sales engineer Fernando Laurel, Salem felt it was clear that the sites were a perfect fit for Spectrum Enterprise Managed SD-WAN. The solution would enable CAPA to extend their existing WAN to the three sites using the connectivity option which was best, for each location. Even better, because the solution is fully managed, Salem could leave the solution design, implementation, management and support to Spectrum Enterprise.

Salem chose Spectrum Enterprise because their modern network solutions could provide his business with reliable, secure connectivity — and cost-effectively scale to support new locations.

Managed solution creates growth opportunities

The solution was installed with the existing Ethernet locations connecting to the remote sites via the SD-WAN gateway, which provides secure connectivity to the WAN via the local wireless ISP.  Because the solution is fully managed, this frees up Salem’s IT Team to concentrate on initiatives that help grow the business. 

For a company that needs to go where the work is, the flexibility SD-WAN offers is a game changer. “Managed SD-WAN gives us the confidence that we can serve all our mobile locations, no matter where they are or how often the trailers need to move,” Salem says. “Because they’re usually in rural areas, we’ve had to rely on the public internet. Managed SD-WAN allows us to use a hybrid WAN to quickly connect remote locations to the network, and gives me confidence that our data is safe and secure.”

No matter where or how fast CAPA grows, Salem knows Spectrum Enterprise will be able to support him. “I feel like I have a true partner on my side,” he says.

Learn more about the solution Spectrum Enterprise designed for CAPA