Case Study: Barrett Steel achieves higher network throughput without extra tooling or maintenance spend with Gigamon GigaVUE

Barrett Steel Increases Network Throughput Capacity Without Boosting Spending on Tooling or Maintenance

Barrett Steel, the UK’s largest independent steel stockholder, was losing visibility as growing network traffic caused dropped packets and skewed data into its security tools. A prior Ixia deployment also carried unexpectedly high maintenance fees, prompting concerns about reliability and ongoing costs.

Barrett deployed Gigamon GigaVUE-HC1 visibility nodes with Flow Mapping and GigaSMART De-duplication, a compact 1U TAP-based solution that was quick to configure and provided high-fidelity, load‑balanced traffic to NDR tools. The result: greater throughput without major NDR upgrades, reduced tool load through de‑duplication, more efficient datacenter use, and significant savings on maintenance versus the previous vendor.

Barrett Steel

Sam Ainscow

Head of It Operations and Chief Information Security Officer