12-Location Distributor Cuts Network Vendors from 4 to 1

The Challenge

A wholesale distribution company with 12 locations across Southern California and the Southwest was managing separate vendors for internet circuits, phones, firewalls, and WiFi. Their 2-person IT team was spending most of their time coordinating between network vendors and troubleshooting connectivity issues instead of working on strategic projects like WMS upgrades and ecommerce integration.

Whenever a site had a network outage, they would spend hours on hold trying to figure out which vendor's problem it was. The legacy PBX provider was slow to respond. The IT consultant who managed firewalls was a one-person shop with limited availability. And the internal WiFi setup had grown organically with consumer-grade access points that had never been properly surveyed or designed.

The Solution

California Telecom conducted a full network assessment across all 12 locations, documenting existing circuits, equipment, and pain points. We then designed a managed SD-WAN solution using Fortinet that consolidated all WAN connectivity under one platform with automatic failover and application-aware routing.

We deployed managed FortiGate firewalls at every site with consistent security policies and network segmentation separating corporate, warehouse, and guest traffic. Voice was migrated from the aging PBX system to our hosted UCaaS platform with auto-attendant, call recording, and desk phones at every location. Enterprise WiFi access points replaced the consumer gear with proper heat mapping and coverage design for warehouse and office areas.

All 12 sites were connected to Netverge with Vergepoint hardware deployed at each location, giving the IT team a single dashboard for complete network visibility. When something goes wrong, our NOC sees it first and the IT team has one number to call instead of four.

The Results

• Network vendor count reduced from 4 to 1
• Mean time to resolution for network issues dropped from 4+ hours to under 30 minutes
• Monthly telecom and network spend reduced approximately 25% through circuit optimization and vendor consolidation
• IT team reclaimed 15+ hours per week previously spent on vendor coordination and network troubleshooting
• 99.95% network uptime across all locations in the first year