Intelligent Connectivity Supports Business Growth for Finland's Viria

Based in Finland, Viria Security Oy — Viria for short — specializes in providing security solutions, information management, and digital development. Its services cover electronic security systems — from video security to access control and locking — as well as cybersecurity and data network solutions, with an extensive network of 350 experts in 22 localities supporting even the most challenging security solutions across the country. Quite simply, Viria protects people, information, and diverse assets at hundreds of companies and public administration bodies, from physical and digital threats.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of digital services has increased and expanded to new categories. The quick pivot to remote working on top of this growth in online services — spurred, of course, by the pandemic — has created strong demand for business digitalization. Indeed, this trend toward digitalization is now one of Viria's most important growth drivers. And, with the company predicting that its business will continue to grow, it plans to expand its customer base to provide services for large firms as well as Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Finland, which account for over 50% of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Prioritizing Network Transformation to Open New Business Opportunities in Finland

The use of data and business intelligence are now key to business development. With the amount of generated data growing exponentially, there is a strong incentive for organizations to make their operations data-driven and seize the opportunities offered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Viria's key competencies include data refinement, analytics, and business intelligence consulting. Indeed, the company creates solutions for the Industrial Internet, helping companies monitor, collect, exchange, analyze, and deliver valuable new insights, for example. In addition, demands for Viria's video security, access control, and locking solutions — which protect physical environments — is also growing.

As Viria plans to continue investing heavily in the development of new latency-sensitive, bandwidth-hungry services — such as data analytics, business digitalization, and cybersecurity solutions — all will need to be tested and carried on the same network, seamlessly working at all times. Viria also provides real-time management for customers, requiring an ultra-fast network experience: any downtime here is certain to have a major impact, directly leading to customer dissatisfaction. Clearly, all of this is a lot for any network to deal with and, unsurprisingly, a traditional campus network is quite incapable of meeting the company's high bandwidth requirements.

In summary, Viria needed to build a future-proof campus network offering vast capacity and an intelligent experience. It required automation to reduce various network issues and outages caused by human error, all while saving on Operating Expenditure (OPEX).

A further challenge for Viria's network infrastructure was to avoid network failures and maintain high levels of reliability. Failure of the campus network affects all systems, compromising client services. Viria's Information Technology (IT) engineers also required simplified network planning and guidance for network deployment. They expected to have more visibility for individual device statuses, to be able to easily monitor the entire network's status, and also quickly locate faulty devices. The ability to simply exchange faulty equipment was also key.

Huawei's CloudCampus Solution Facilitates Viria's Rapid Business and Service Expansion

To stay up-to-date with the latest technology and very best solutions, Viria evaluated the main solution providers in the market. After a thorough review, Viria selected the Huawei CloudCampus network solution, which has already served customers across industries in more than 100 countries and regions. With CloudCampus, it's possible to make substantial OPEX savings, automating network services throughout the entire lifecycle and improving network resource utilization through the automated construction of virtual networks. The solution also offers less time-consuming and labor-intensive deployment than other solutions on the market.

With intelligent upgrades in connectivity, experience, and Operations and Maintenance (O&M), CloudCampus provides a straightforward and elegant solution, establishing a robust networking foundation. The solution uses the AI-based iMaster NCE-Campus — Huawei's next generation Autonomous Driving Network (ADN) management and control system for campus networks — and iMaster NCE-CampusInsight, an intelligent network analysis platform with troubleshooting capabilities.

Helping Viria reduce both OPEX and O&M costs, iMaster NCE-Campus accelerates enterprise digital transformation. Meanwhile, iMaster NCE-CampusInsight collects network data in real-time, identifies fault patterns, and displays the network experience in full, including who is connected, when they are connected, which Access Point (AP) they are using, and any issues they may have encountered. Simply put, iMaster NCE-CampusInsight helps O&M personnel discover 85% of network issues to provide an excellent network service experience for users.

With a built-in Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) server, CloudCampus also provides unified access control over wired and wireless networks, including a fully automated provisioning process.

"The CloudCampus network solution contains all the necessary competitive network devices, such as advanced Wi-Fi 6 and high performance switching technology, packed together with cloud-based central management of all network devices and device provisioning. The solution also contains advanced Network Operations Center (NOC) troubleshooting tools with leading telemetry and AI technology," said Pasi Heikkinen, Service Owner at Viria.

Leading Finnish Enterprise Digitalization with Enhanced Reliability and Connectivity

According to feedback on the Viria project, the solution fulfills the project goals of providing simplified network management, seamless access to a reliable wireless network, and significant OPEX savings. In this way, Viria's super capacity anytime, anywhere, and easy O&M needs have been met, and its business expansion model for the near future is supported.

Viria can now continue to boost its customers' competitiveness with data analytics and digital services, helping its clients develop data-driven organizations. In the future, it plans to create innovations, develop a broader range of services, and support its customers' business continuity.

"During all phases of the project — Proof of Concept (PoC), implementation, and production transfer — the Huawei team has given us great support locally in Finland, together with Huawei Research and Development (R&D) and other teams across China. I can gladly say that we did great work together, and we are pioneers building up next generation services in the Finnish market," Heikkinen said.

Its new network infrastructure provides a solid foundation for the growth of Viria and its services. Indeed, the company believes its team is just scratching the surface of what it can accomplish with this new solution. For example, the Huawei solution creates the possibility for Viria to integrate an Internet of Things (IoT) network with its IT network, further simplifying network management: with IoT, Viria's physical security solutions, such as alarm and remote control services, can perform tasks automatically, for example. The successful deployment of CloudCampus creates an opportunity for Viria to take advantage of a high-performance unified network solution and explore the potential for IoT and campus network integration.

The aim for the future is to continue meeting customer expectations and improve the overall customer experience. Viria is moving ahead with an ambitious plan to cooperate with small businesses in Finland — reaffirming its commitment to them by ensuring that they can count on Viria's intelligent, well-thought-out solutions.

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