Modernizing the Network for a Growing Financial Services Firm
Client Profile
Industry: Financial Services
Company Size: ~350 employees
Environment: Headquarters + 4 regional offices + remote workforce
Business Requirements: High availability, secure connectivity, reliable applications, scalable infrastructure
The company had grown through new employees, additional offices, cloud applications, and increased digital collaboration. Its network infrastructure, however, had evolved through several individual upgrades rather than through a unified architecture.
The result was an environment that was functional—but increasingly difficult to manage, secure, and scale.
Why the Client Needed a Refresh
Several core switches and network components were approaching the end of their practical lifecycle. The company was also operating different generations of infrastructure across locations.
At the same time, network traffic had increased significantly due to:
- Cloud applications
- Video collaboration
- Remote users
- Larger data volumes
- Increased wireless usage
- New security requirements
- Additional business applications
The IT team recognized that replacing aging switches one at a time would simply postpone the problem.
They needed a network modernization strategy—not a hardware replacement exercise.
What They Wanted to Achieve
The leadership team wanted to:
Modernize aging network infrastructure
Standardize networking across offices
Improve availability and performance
Strengthen security and access controls
Simplify network management
Optimize Cisco licensing and support
Increase visibility into network health
Create additional capacity for growth
Reduce the operational burden on internal IT
The objective
Build a secure, scalable, manageable infrastructure foundation capable of supporting the company’s next phase of growth.
The Challenges
Aging Core Infrastructure
Several critical network devices were approaching lifecycle replacement, creating increased support and availability concerns.
Fragmented Architecture
Different offices had different generations of equipment and configurations.
Licensing Complexity
The organization had accumulated Cisco licenses and support agreements over multiple purchasing cycles, making it difficult to determine what was being used, what was needed, and what should be renewed.
Cisco’s current Catalyst licensing model provides centralized license visibility and management through Cisco License Central, while Catalyst 9000 platforms use Smart Licensing models.
Limited Network Visibility
The IT team lacked a consistent centralized view of network health, client experience, capacity, and application performance.
Security Requirements
The company needed stronger segmentation and access controls as more employees, devices, and cloud services connected to the environment.
Limited IT Resources
A small infrastructure team was spending too much time on routine troubleshooting and device administration.
How OJASVI Approached the Problem
We Started With an Assessment—Not a Quote.
OJASVI performed an infrastructure and licensing assessment covering:
Network topology
Switching capacity
Port utilization
Wireless requirements
WAN connectivity
Device lifecycle
Security architecture
Licensing & support
Redundancy
Growth projections
We then mapped the existing environment against the client’s 3–5 year business and technology requirements.
The goal was to determine:
What should be replaced? What should be retained? What should be upgraded? And what should be redesigned?
The Recommended Cisco Solution
A Phased Infrastructure Modernization
Rather than replacing everything at once, OJASVI recommended a phased Cisco architecture.
Cisco Catalyst Switching
Modern Catalyst switching was recommended for the core and access layers based on port density, PoE requirements, performance, redundancy, and growth.
Cisco Wireless
The wireless environment was standardized to improve coverage, capacity, roaming, and manageability.
Cisco Catalyst Center
Catalyst Center provided centralized management, automation, network assurance, and visibility. Cisco describes Catalyst Center as supporting centralized management, provisioning automation, assurance, and AI-assisted diagnostics.
Security & Segmentation
The architecture incorporated appropriate segmentation and access controls to better separate users, devices, guest traffic, and sensitive business resources.
High Availability
Critical network components were designed with redundancy appropriate to the business’s availability requirements.
Cisco Licensing Optimization
This became an important part of the project.
Instead of simply adding new subscriptions, OJASVI reviewed:
Existing entitlements → Actual utilization → New requirements → Support → Future expansion
The objective was to align licensing with the architecture and avoid paying for capabilities that weren’t required.
Cisco’s licensing model provides centralized visibility into purchased licenses and deployed usage, supporting license management and purchasing decisions.
The result:
A more predictable licensing strategy aligned with the client’s infrastructure roadmap.
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What OJASVI Was Able to Solve
Aging Infrastructure
→ Replaced critical infrastructure approaching lifecycle limits.
Fragmented Architecture
→ Standardized networking across locations.
Limited Visibility
→ Introduced centralized management and network assurance.
Licensing Complexity
→ Consolidated and aligned licensing with actual requirements.
Security Gaps
→ Created a stronger foundation for segmentation and access control.
Limited Capacity
→ Added scalable infrastructure for additional users, devices, applications, and locations.
Manual Administration
→ Introduced greater automation and centralized management.
The Operational Impact
The biggest improvement wasn’t simply network speed.
It was how much less time the IT team needed to spend figuring out what was happening.
Catalyst Center’s assurance capabilities can correlate network, client, and application information to provide actionable insights and support guided troubleshooting.
Annual Time Savings
IT Activity | Estimated Time Before | Estimated After | Annual Time Recovered |
Routine network administration | 12 hrs/month | 5 hrs/month | 84 hrs |
Troubleshooting & investigation | 30 hrs/month | 15 hrs/month | 180 hrs |
Configuration & health reviews | 10 hrs/month | 4 hrs/month | 72 hrs |
Licensing & asset management | 6 hrs/month | 2 hrs/month | 48 hrs |
Total | 58 hrs/month | 26 hrs/month | 384 hrs/year |
Potential time recovered: ~384 hours per year
That’s approximately 48 eight-hour workdays redirected away from repetitive infrastructure administration.
Illustrative scenario; actual savings depend on network size, incident volume, automation maturity, and the customer’s existing operational processes.
What Did Those 384 Hours Become?
This is where the ROI becomes more interesting.
Instead of spending those hours troubleshooting switches and investigating recurring network issues, the IT team could redirect capacity toward:
Cybersecurity initiatives
Cloud modernization
Application improvements
Data & AI projects
Business continuity
Infrastructure planning
Employee technology experience
The infrastructure refresh effectively created additional IT capacity without adding another full-time employee.
ROI
Assume the recovered 384 hours/year represent an internal IT labor value of approximately $75/hour.
384 × $75 = $28,800 of annual labor capacity recovered.
If the infrastructure modernization generated an additional $12,000/year in avoided support, emergency replacement, and operational costs:
Illustrative annual benefit: ~$40,800
Against an illustrative $150,000 infrastructure modernization investment:
Simple annual benefit / investment = ~27%
And the broader value extends beyond the direct financial calculation:
- Lower operational risk
- Better network visibility
- Greater scalability
- Improved employee experience
- Better licensing governance
- Reduced infrastructure complexity
- Increased IT capacity
These are approx. calculations. Actual ROI should be calculated using the customer’s investment, labor rates, avoided costs, and measured operational improvements.
The Bigger Outcome
From Infrastructure Expense to Growth Platform
The Cisco refresh gave the organization more than newer hardware.
It created a technology foundation capable of supporting:
More users
More locations
More cloud applications
More connected devices
More data
More security requirements
More business growth
The company moved from a fragmented, aging environment toward a standardized, visible, scalable infrastructure platform.
The OJASVI Difference
We Don’t Recommend What You Don’t Need.
OJASVI looks at the entire infrastructure picture:
Business requirements
↓
Infrastructure assessment
↓
Architecture
↓
Cisco hardware
↓
Licensing optimization
↓
Implementation
↓
Management & visibility
↓
Continuous optimization
The result:
A smarter infrastructure investment today—and a stronger platform for tomorrow’s growth.
