Case Study: Tennessee college achieves outage-free resiliency, increased bandwidth and 95% fewer help-desk tickets with Windstream Enterprise SD-WAN

How one college greatly improved resiliency and bandwidth for their students and faculty

Tennessee college, a regionally accredited private institution serving 6,000+ students and 1,000 employees across five campuses and virtual programs, was struggling with an aging MPLS network that caused frequent outages, limited bandwidth and high help‑desk volume. The college engaged Windstream Enterprise and adopted high‑availability SD‑WAN (SD‑WAN Concierge™), Managed Network Security, Dynamic IP and the WE Connect SD‑WAN Portal to replace legacy services and restore resilient, scalable connectivity.

Windstream Enterprise implemented dual‑access active/active SD‑WAN, cloud‑based Managed Network Security and Dynamic IP voice with centralized monitoring via WE Connect, delivering redundant failover, scalable bandwidth and simplified management. The deployment produced measurable results: no SD‑WAN outages in three years, a 95% reduction in help‑desk tickets, a seven‑fold surge in VPN users handled during March 2020’s shift to virtual learning, and avoided the severe downtime impacts the college had previously estimated at roughly $1M per hour.

Tennessee college