A nonprofit microfinance institution in the Philippines, Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF), deployed Riverbed SD-WAN to improve its infrastructure and connectivity to further its mission.

NWTF is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that “helps women in the Philippines, particularly in rural communities, move out of poverty and achieve self-sufficiency and self-reliance through microloans,” according to Raymond Serios, special projects manager at NWTF.

The organization was seeking to implement new digital initiatives and grow its microfinance programs, but it faced a few hurdles. The first was the lack of connectivity in the country — particularly in rural areas where Serios noted “connectivity is spotty and unreliable at best. In fact, only 40%-45% of the communities NWTF serves has a stable internet connection.”

The second hurdle it faced was its legacy network, which Serios described as a “hardware-centric, manpower-intensive, rigid and error-prone system of individual network devices spanning 150-plus branches.” And third, the organization had limited visibility into what was happening on the network.

NWTF initially rolled out Riverbed SD-WAN at 120 branches, and the re-build of its infrastructure enabled the organization to open 30 new branches in 2018 — all connected via SD-WAN. In 2019, it intends to roll out 60 new branches, 48 of which it plans to have by the end of this month. According to Serios, this means that NWTF will be able to reach 600,000 individuals this year through its initiatives.

"The greatest benefit has been the ability to bring connectivity to some of the most rural areas of Philippines and to scale our organization, advancing the human experience for the people that need it most,” said Serios.

And, because the added connectivity and visibility brought in by SD-WAN enables the NGO to have a quicker turnaround times on services offered, its employees have been able to refocus their time on providing social services (rather than be bogged down by network issues), and be more responsive overall.

Serios said that NWTF evaluated multiple SD-WAN vendors before settling on Riverbed but ultimately did because of its ease-of-use. “We operate in a province with a significant IT skills gap. Implementation and ongoing maintenance would have to be simple,” he said.

He added that this ease-of-use was a significant gap in the overall SD-WAN market, “Most vendors we spoke with were able to show off features and functionality, but Riverbed was the only vendor that was able to connect the technical capabilities to the business outcomes the decision-makers in our organization care about.”

One of the ways that Riverbed is able to maintain this ease is through its central management portal, which provides a single-pane-of-glass through which to view the performance of each branch network. When NWTF has challenges or technical issues, it can contact Riverbed for support or Riverbed’s local partner Trends, which is an IT and technology services provider.