Case Study: First National Bank of Long Island achieves faster bandwidth, improved uptime and significant cost savings with VMware SD-WAN

New York Bank Strengthens Bandwidth with VMware SD-WAN

The First National Bank of Long Island, a community-focused bank founded in 1927, needed to modernize aging T1 networks to support growth, better customer service, and new digital initiatives like enhanced mobile banking and automated mortgage processing. As the last independent bank in the Long Island/New York City area, it required greater bandwidth, reliability, and centralized network management to compete and expand services across branches and data centers.

The bank implemented VMware SD-WAN as a managed service from Windstream Enterprise across 44 locations, using active-active 100 Mbps connections and centralized orchestration via the WE Connect/VMware SASE portal. The upgrade delivered better-than-98% uptime, simpler branch onboarding and global configuration changes, enabled video collaboration and remote-desktop lending workflows, and generated operational savings (including about $80,000/year by retiring POTS lines), freeing IT to focus on business growth.

First National Bank of Long Island

Daniel Viola

VP and Director of Information Technology