Case Study: Barrett Steel achieves 25% cost savings and reliable high-quality VoIP with HPE Aruba Networking

Enabling greater agility while improving quality of service

Barrett Steel, the UK’s largest independent steel stockholder, relied on phone-based sales so VoIP uptime and quality were mission-critical. Persistent MPLS outages, costly and poor third‑party support, and dropped calls drove the company to bring WAN control in‑house and look for a broadband SD‑WAN solution to ensure performance, availability and lower costs.

Barrett deployed Aruba EdgeConnect with Unity‑Orchestrator to centralize management, apply business‑intent overlays that prioritize voice, retire branch routers, and bond dual links for resilience. The solution rolled out to 35 sites (about 30 in one week), brings new locations online in hours using temporary 4G where needed, eliminated VoIP complaints, simplified operations, and is forecast to cut connectivity costs by ~25% while delivering sub‑millisecond failover and higher overall service quality.

Barrett Steel

Sam Ainscow

Head of It Operations and Chief Information Security Officer