Case Study: Cushman & Wakefield achieves secure, high-performance SD-WAN and $1.5M annual OpEx savings with Zscaler

How Cushman & Wakefield landed secure SD-WAN with Aruba and Zscaler™

Cushman & Wakefield, a global real estate services firm with its HQ in Chicago and roughly 50,000 staff across 400 offices in 60 countries, faced a slow, inconsistent WAN that hampered productivity and the rapid onboarding of acquired businesses. Heavy SaaS usage (Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday) and a hub-and-spoke architecture left users reporting better performance offsite and prevented the company from scaling and integrating M&A targets quickly.

Cushman & Wakefield deployed Aruba EdgeConnect SD‑WAN paired with Zscaler Internet Access to enable secure local internet breakouts, centralized policy, and API-driven integration. The combined solution delivered consistent, prioritized access to business apps (35% average app performance improvement, 99.999% availability), simplified branch provisioning, full traffic visibility, eliminated many on‑prem appliances, and is expected to save about $1.5M in annual OpEx.

Cushman & Wakefield

Rob Franch

Chief Technology Officer