Clark Schaefer Hackett Taps Nile’s Campus NaaS for Global IT Infrastructure

The role of the campus network has changed significantly in the past few years. 93% of respondents to a recent joint study between ZK Research and Cube Research stated the network was more critical to business operations. At the same time, 80% cite that complexity has grown over that period. This has created interest in new network operating models. One is Network as a Service (NaaS), where the business can purchase the network using cloud principles. 

One company that recently made this leap is the accounting and business advisory firm Clark Schaefer Hackett (CSH). It recently selected Nile Access Service to replace its existing wired and wireless LAN infrastructure across eight sites globally. CSH ranks among the Top 100 CPA and advisory firms, providing a broad spectrum of services, including audit and assurance, tax, business consulting, risk management, valuations, and transaction services. With over 700 employees across eight locations, including a site in Mumbai, the firm has a significant operational footprint requiring a robust and reliable networking solution.

Developing a data-driven tech strategy

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview CSH's CIO, Kevin Staton, as to why the company made the big shift from a traditional network to Nile's as a service model. Staton joined CSH a little over a year ago and has been focused on enhancing the firm’s technological capabilities, aiming to develop a data-driven technology strategy that supports the company’s broader business goals.

“We’re in the financial space,” he told me. “We do auditing, tax, and insurance, so security is important for our firm. We were previously using an incumbent vendor across eight offices. Most of our staff are IT generalists. We don’t have the budget to have a niche network engineer-type skill set on the team.”

He told me he was looking for ease of management and zero trust out of the box. Plus, he and his team were ready for a new approach. The existing campus network architecture provided by that longstanding vendor had become outdated, offering little innovation or growth. This prompted a comprehensive search for a new solution that could meet current demands and support the firm’s future initiatives.

The need for a more advanced solution

While evaluating CSH’s existing local network infrastructure, Staton and his team realized the firm needed a more advanced solution that could better align with their evolving technological needs. Although CSH sought a new solution, Staton did give the incumbent a shot. “We got a quote for refreshing our incumbent vendor equipment,” he told me. “They hadn’t innovated. They were still selling us the same switches we bought six years ago. So, Nile represented something more modern for us.”

Nile Access Service emerged as the preferred choice due to its unique blend of features and capabilities. Staton said that Nile’s performance guarantees for network coverage, capacity, and availability were key factors in the decision-making process.

Freeing staff to be more strategic

In addition, as he underscored earlier, Nile’s AI-powered as-a-service architecture was appealing, with built-in zero trust security designed to prevent lateral movement of malware within the campus network. Nile also automates network lifecycle management, which reduces the time and effort required to maintain and update the network. As a result, Staton’s IT team can focus on more strategic business initiatives. In fact, the move from the incumbent vendor to Nile freed up one FTE—someone who’s now in a leadership position focused on those strategic initiatives.

In addition, Staton emphasized that the transition to Nile should enable his team to dedicate more resources to critical technology projects, such as AI and application automation, which are essential to the firm’s core business functions. By shifting away from the traditional, time-consuming tasks associated with network management, the firm can now concentrate on using technology to drive business growth and improve client services.

The selection of Nile Access Service also reflects a broader trend among enterprises, where CIOs increasingly prioritize innovation and strategic technology projects over infrastructure maintenance.

Foundational requirements

In my conversations with Nile, the company has also noted that secure, reliable, and high-performance connectivity is now foundational for organizations. However, many do not want the overhead of dedicating resources to maintaining the network. Hence, there is a rise in interest in NaaS.

Nile’s NaaS solution addresses these needs by providing a scalable network model that minimizes operational burdens while delivering guaranteed connectivity and performance.

Some final thoughts

The “as a service” model has transformed almost every part of IT, with the network being one of the few areas that has yet to make that shift. As the network continues to grow in importance to the business, more businesses will look that way as it brings a simpler way to run the network combined with guaranteed performance and security.

Zeus Kerravala is the founder and principal analyst with ZK Research.

Read his other Network Computing articles here.

Related articles: