Customer Success Story
Mist AI simplifies network conversion during Seacoast Bank acquisition
Founded 90+ years ago, Florida’s Seacoast has grown into a large community bank through an aggressive acquisition strategy. Seacoast uses Juniper AI-driven wired and wireless networking to ensure its branch locations and banking services operate seamlessly.
Overview
| Company | Seacoast Bank |
| Industry | Financial Services |
| Products used | EX Series, Wireless (Wi-Fi) Assurance, Wired Assurance, Edge, Wireless Access Points |
| Region | Americas |
17
Banks acquired in the past five years
3
Days required to switch newly acquired banks to the Seacoast Bank networking system
$14.8 billion
In assets
77
Bank and branch locations in Central and Southeast Florida, plus additional ATM locations
Quickly onboard acquisitions to limit disruption
When Seacoast acquired Professional Bank in January 2023, it needed a simple, expedient solution to replace the networks at the acquired bank’s branches throughout Miami and ensure that they complied with Seacoast’s governance, risk, and compliance policies.
“We don’t integrate the acquired bank’s network,” says Stuart Thacker, VP of IT engineering for Seacoast Bank. “We install a fresh Seacoast network at the headquarters and all the branches—the works.”
In addition, Seacoast wanted secure Wi-Fi services for employees and contractors that eliminated the need for a VPN and shared passwords, which made network access difficult to control.
AI-driven insights improve network reliability
Seacoast chose Juniper’s AI-driven enterprise network solution to replace the existing networks at the acquired bank’s branches.
Juniper Wi-Fi Access Points and EX Series Switches work with the Juniper Mist cloud architecture, driven by Mist AI™, to optimize network experiences across wireless and wired. Juniper Mist Edge extends VLANs to branch locations and home workers to replace remote VPN technology, delivering a better user experience to employees on their personal devices and outside vendors.
Mist AI simplifies network operations for the Seacoast IT team. Juniper Mist Wi-Fi Assurance and Mist Wired Assurance automate network operations, simplifying installation, and improving connectivity. The Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) uses natural language processing to help staff detect and correct issues proactively, which reduces network problems and downtime.
Seacoast worked with Dell Technologies as its trusted consulting advisor.
A successful template for future acquisitions
As the Seacoast team prepared to cut over the acquired bank, they used the Juniper Mist portal to establish the client service levels experience metrics and set up the configuration templates. With the portal’s intuitive interface, no CLI was needed.
The new switches and access points were shipped to each branch and quickly installed by technicians, who used the included Juniper Mist mobile app to scan a QR code to activate each AP and get the switches live. Using the Marvis Virtual Network Assistant, the team quickly identified and resolved an error during the conversion—a network loop that was inadvertently created—and quickly fixed the disruption.
Deploying the Juniper network was so streamlined that Seacoast converted seven Professional Bank branch locations over a single weekend. Thacker plans to duplicate the process for future acquisitions.
“We started looking for a new network vendor 60 days ago, and we already have one successful bank conversion under our belt,” he says.
The Products
The EX Series Ethernet Switches are cloud-ready, high-performance access and aggregation/core layer switches designed for enterprise branch, campus, and data center networks. Wired access networks don’t have to be complex—you can reduce risk and cost without compromising performance, quality, and innovation.
Wireless (Wi-Fi) Assurance
Driven by Mist AI and machine learning, the Juniper Mist Wireless Assurance cloud service automates troubleshooting and operations, making wireless networks predictable, reliable, and measurable while providing near-real-time visibility into user service levels.
Wired Assurance
The Juniper Mist Wired Assurance service brings Mist AI to access-layer switching. It sets a new network management standard with AI-native operations and automation, improving the experiences of devices connected to resources through Juniper EX Series Switches.
Marvis VNA
Marvis, the first AI-driven virtual network assistant, optimizes user and operator experiences with proactive actions and self-driving network operations. A natural language conversational interface provides simple and seamless interactions, making Marvis an integrated member of any IT team.
Edge
Juniper Mist Edge extends our microservices architecture to the campus, bringing agility and scale while enabling new applications at the edge.
Juniper is leading the convergence of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth® LE, and IoT with our enterprise-grade Access Points. The Juniper Access Points work in conjunction with the Juniper Mist Cloud Architecture and Mist AI to collect and analyze metadata in near real-time from all wireless clients.
Published November 2023