Anadolu Efes is the world's 10th largest beer producer by volume, 5th in Europe, with a 57-year heritage and exports to over 70 countries serving 750+ million consumers. Their legacy IT infrastructure — built on traditional VPNs and MPLS leased lines — had become a bottleneck for the entire organization. VPN sessions disconnected every 12 hours, forcing approximately 3,500 employees to reauthenticate multiple times per day. Onboarding a new site meant ordering physical leased lines, shipping hardware, and waiting weeks or even months for activation. The network architecture had grown so complex that it could no longer support the speed and agility the business demanded. On the security front, over 100 web applications were directly exposed to the internet with limited protection. The existing WAF rules were static and reactive, leaving critical digital platforms vulnerable to modern attack vectors including sophisticated DDoS campaigns, credential stuffing, and API abuse.
We designed and executed a three-phase transformation program that fundamentally changed how Anadolu Efes connects, secures, and operates its global network. In the first phase, we replaced the traditional VPN infrastructure with Cloudflare One — a full SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) platform built on Zero Trust principles. Every user now authenticates through identity-based access control integrated with Active Directory. The WARP device client provides automatic, transparent authentication the moment an employee opens their laptop — no manual VPN connections, no 12-hour session drops. Contractors and external partners access internal resources through a browser-based isolation layer without installing any software. In the second phase, we migrated all MPLS circuits to Cloudflare Magic WAN using GRE and IPsec tunnels. This replaced expensive, rigid leased lines with software-defined connectivity over standard internet connections. Routing, security, and performance policies are now managed from a single centralized dashboard, giving the infrastructure team full visibility and control without touching physical hardware. New sites — including seasonal warehouses — can be onboarded in hours instead of weeks, with zero hardware investment. In the third phase, we deployed Cloudflare WAF and DDoS protection across all 100+ public-facing applications. The Anycast network routes all traffic through Cloudflare's global edge, meaning attackers only see Cloudflare IPs — the internal infrastructure is completely shielded. Managed rulesets, rate limiting, and bot management now operate continuously, blocking approximately one million malicious requests per month.
Network latency dropped from 250 ms to 30–40 ms — an 85% improvement that directly accelerated sales operations and internal workflows. Approximately 1 million malicious requests are now blocked every month across all applications, with zero successful breaches since deployment. New site deployments that previously required weeks of procurement, shipping, and configuration now complete in hours using standard internet connections — with zero hardware investment for seasonal locations. The VPN reauthentication problem was eliminated entirely: 3,500 employees are now securely connected the moment they open their device, whether in the office, at home, or at a remote location. The infrastructure team manages all routing, security, and access policies from a single dashboard, reducing operational complexity and enabling faster incident response.
Cloudflare is now our network and security hub. Users are securely connected the moment they open their device — whether they're in the office, at home, or in a café. Attackers only see Cloudflare IPs. They cannot see our internal infrastructure, which limits what they can do.