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Modern workspace specialist Productivity took home the Network Evolution Award at the 2025 techpartner.news Impact Awards earlier this month for the first deployment of Axis secure service edge at scale in Asia Pacific for Lutheran Services.
Lutheran Services is a healthcare provider with 25 locations across Queensland and over 1,200 users.
It was operating a costly legacy multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network that was also holding the organisation back from moving to software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
Initially, Lutheran Services engaged Productivity for the project with another vendor in mind, but that vendor would only form one part of the overall solution and would need to integrate edge devices at each site from a separate hardware vendor.
Productivity pitched the idea of a single-vendor solution with HPE Aruba and, after a demonstration on Axis Security with HPE EdgeConnect, the customer requested a proof of concept.
HPE had only acquired Axis Security less than a year before the project started, which made it a novel project – doubly so in the Asia Pacific region where it hadn’t been deployed at this scale before.
The Productivity team had developed a relationship with Lutheran Services IT staff such that they were trusted in the recommendation of this relatively new product.
The HPE team was also closely involved in the project, with Productivity coordinating regular meetings that included both vendor and customer.
The final solution was a HPE Unified secure access service edge (SASE) solution using Silverpeak software-defined wireless access network (SD-WAN) appliances and Axis SSE, as well as HPE Clearpass.
The project began in February 2024 with a 12-month maximum delivery time and, despite a change of project manager for Lutheran Services, was completed within budget in just under six months.
During delivery, Lutheran Services’ sites expected to have network outages during the upgrade, potentially highly disruptive for the healthcare provider.
Productivity was able to minimise disruption with outages limited to just two minutes during the earliest changeovers, which was down to about 30 seconds for the final sites.
The result was a drastically improved networking experience across all of Lutheran's locations, with speeds increasing up to 70 times in some cases.
With all client devices installed with Atmos, the Axis Security client, all devices were able to securely access all company resources, including a legacy remote desktop farm deployment, providing secure access to historical company data.
SaaS application traffic was directed through Axis’ Points of Presence (POP) in Sydney and Melbourne, ensuring all data came from approved HPE datacenters.
Security was improved for sensitive patient data in company applications and since deployment, the network has had 100 per cent uptime – all while reducing operating costs by 20 per cent to 30 per cent.
Lutheran Services chief executive Nick Ryan said the solution enabled the access to information that was faster and safer.
“Safer for our clients, safer for our residents and safer for our workers as well,” he said.
Lutheran Services' executive director of enterprise transformation, Deepak Oberoi, added that the improvement in cybersecurity was an obvious benefit.
“SASE with zero trust architecture is the new standard," he said.
"Other benefits included cost savings, faster provisioning times, productivity for our staff who look after the network, enhanced residents and client experience.”
