About North Star

Born in 2006 from the merger of the Endeavour and Teesdale housing associations, North Star is a forward-thinking housing association that not only builds affordable homes across the North of England, but helps create strong communities and personal connections wherever they operate, driving and taking part in numerous initiatives to make a lasting, positive difference in people's lives.

Challenges

In 2016, North Star was preparing to welcome the Darlington Housing Association into its group. As the plans for this merger were put into place, it became clear that the complex legacy IT infrastructure was rapidly approaching the end of its lifecycle, and as a result, potential ways to future-proof and optimise it were presented for consideration.

In particular, with the increasing complexity of legal and compliance obligations, combined with an evolving cyber threat landscape, maintaining robust security and data protection was a key priority. Furthermore, while they had a Virtual Desktop solution in place, it had proven both slow and difficult to manage, which limited staff's options with regards to remote working and omnichannel communication with colleagues and residents.

In light of these concerns, and in order to bring the IT infrastructure back in line with their long-term business goals, North Star seized the opportunity to modernise their entire IT infrastructure, for which they engaged with Exponential-e.

Solution 

Following a detailed review of North Star's goals, requirements and existing infrastructure, a full-scale Cloud migration was conducted, with the entire legacy infrastructure moved to a UK-based Virtual Data Centre, and full server replication to a second VDC, also hosted in the UK. This controlled migration process was managed by a dedicated account team from Exponential-e, ensuring the transformation was completed on time, to budget, and with minimal disruption to daily operations.

All eight North Star sites were connected with a high-performance WAN, ensuring consistent performance of the new Virtual Desktop for all teams, and - in turn - enhancing communication and collaboration.

The existing Virtual Desktop solution was completely replaced with Citrix Virtual Desktops, delivered as a fully managed service to ensure North Star's staff could begin making use of the solution's full capabilities as quickly as possible, and that any initial and future issues could be swiftly identified and resolved, without creating an unnecessary drain on internal IT teams' time and resources.

The managed services model was extended to the security ecosystem, with Exponential-e providing hands-on monitoring and drawing on cutting-edge threat intelligence to ensure the latest cyber threats could be pre-emptively dealt with and any potential weaknesses in the infrastructure could be resolved before they were exploited.

Throughout lockdown, with staff forced to work remotely, the new infrastructure proved invaluable, allowing staff and residents to remain in close contact through a range of channels, including voice, telephony, online chat, and email, with consistently high quality throughout. This not only allowed staff to remain as close to 'business as usual' as possible, but allowed residents to continue accessing essential services as easily as possible, with Exponential-e's monitoring of the infrastructure freeing staff to focus on first-class service delivery and quick resolutions.

The success of this migration represents the first steppingstone towards North Star's planned Cloud-first strategy, with a fully virtualised infrastructure providing the agility needed to effectively respond to unexpected changes in the digital landscape and the evolving needs of their residents.

About NHS Digital

NHS Digital is the entire UK health and social care system's trusted information and technology partner, utilising innovative solutions to enhance patient care, open new channels of communication, and optimise operational efficiency.

The Challenge

Solution 

After being introduced to Exponential-e via referral, NHS Digital engaged with them to support their Cloud Connect requirements, providing diverse and resilient connectivity to AWS and Azure public clouds. To manage this initial deployment, a dedicated account team was assigned at Exponential-e, working closely with NHS Digital's own IT teams to ensure the success of the project, provide hands-on support and guidance whenever needed, and enable the design and delivery of bespoke solutions, as required.

Since then, the partnership has continued to evolve, with 2018 seeing NHS Digital begin the deployment of Exponential-e's SD-WAN solution, in order to overcome their connectivity challenges in a changing digital landscape. Following its successful launch, this solution provided NHS Digital's IT teams with maximum control and visibility of their cross-site connectivity, while automating all data encryption and protection processes, removing the resulting drain on internal IT teams' time. The combination of intelligent automation with a 'single pane of glass' view of the entire network and security ecosystem allows NHS Digital Teams to manage traffic by application and by user, ensuring all staff have access to the tools and information they need, wherever they are working from, with consistent performance across all regions and encryption of sensitive data available with a single click via the portal.

The strong rapport that has developed between NHS Digital and their Exponential-e account team since the initial Cloud Connect deployment - along with the inherent flexibility and scalability of the IT infrastructure - helped ensure a smooth transition to remote working for staff in response to COVID-19. Operational efficiency and patient care could be maintained across all regions, with proactive monitoring from Exponential-e's 24 / 7 support team, ensuring any potential issues or security risks could be swiftly detected and resolved.

Entering 2021, the Leeds Government Hub was successfully launched, in line with Government-led initiatives, with high-capacity connectivity delivered by Exponential-e. This provided more than 3,000 staff with the means to maintain operational efficiency and cost control, while NHS Digital and Exponential-e teams continue working closely together to identify any additional opportunities to achieve new cost savings and performance improvements, including the delivery of bespoke solutions, tailored to NHS Digital's unique requirements.

The ongoing success of this partnership paints a clear picture of what can be achieved within the healthcare sector when internal IT teams combine their expertise with that of trusted partners, who are deeply invested in the success of the sector and the different ways in which technological innovations can enhance both operational efficiencies and patient care, across the entire UK.

About Tandem Money

Tandem is 'The Good Green Bank', a fully regulated digital app‐based bank founded on the idea of putting customers' needs first whilst helping them save more than just their money by pushing for a sustainable future. The acquisition of green lender Allium in 2020, an established green homes lender, accelerated Tandem's mission into the green space. Tandem offers savings, mortgages, and loans to help customers green their properties, and eventually their lives.

Challenges

The key driver behind Tandem's ongoing digital transformation was earning a full banking license in 2018 - something that had been a core focus of their infrastructure's evolution. This meant their infrastructure would need to fulfil all legal and compliance obligations around the handling of financial data, and also demonstrate the highest standard of operational resilience.

At the time, Tandem's IT and telephony infrastructure was hosted at various separate data centres, while their banking application was hosted on AWS services, and a separate site set aside for workplace recovery. Although multiple sites were involved here, the whole network depended on the London office, creating a single point of failure.

After a comprehensive evaluation of various suppliers, Tandem engaged with Exponential‐e to ensure these critical elements could be securely interconnected in order to maximise performance and scalability and ensure all requirements for full bank status were achieved. Exponential‐e's deep experience in the financial sector was critical here, providing Tandem with complete confidence that the partnership would provide a positive contribution to their journey.

Solution 

The networking solution delivered by Exponential‐e interconnected all Tandem sites via a high-performance WAN - a fully managed low‐latency solution that ensured consistent performance across all sites. This was implemented by a dedicated Exponential‐e account team, who project managed every stage of the deployment to ensure there would be no service disruption and that Tandem's long-term goals remained the primary focus throughout the deployment and beyond.

Critically, this fulfilled all compliance requirements regarding the handling and storage of financial data, while ensuring Tandem's teams would have the right tools at their fingertips at all times. To ensure a disruption free migration process, secure connections were created between Exponential-e's self‐owned network and Tandem's AWS services, allowing for a successful consolidation of the different elements of their infrastructure, and providing IT teams with a higher level of control and visibility.

As the partnership between Tandem and Exponential‐e evolved, a combination of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Office 365 was established as the ideal combination of solutions to further optimise Tandem's overall efficiency and enable effortless collaboration between their various teams, regardless of where they were located, with security policies applied automatically and role‐based segregation opening up a wide range of opportunities for remote working.

Throughout 2020, when the COVID‐19 pandemic forced organisations worldwide to rapidly transition to a remote workforce, the inherent flexibility and scalability of Tandem's infrastructure and a robust business continuity plan showed its true worth, as the entire workforce were able to begin working remotely with minimal disruption to day‐to‐day operations, and no compromise in terms of security and compliance. This option had already been utilised on an ad‐hoc basis by Tandem's engineers, but a scenario where it would need to be utilised on a company‐wide basis had been considered and factored into the business continuity plan, with tests taking place to ensure such measures would be viable, should they ever be needed.

In this way, Tandem has demonstrated how the right infrastructure, with the support of the right technology partner, provides organisations in even the most challenging sectors with the agility to pivot in response to unexpected, large‐scale shifts in the digital landscape. Tandem's long‐term digital transformation continues, with plans in place to bring its core banking suite in house and into the Cloud, for a further layer of control and flexibility.

About Cottsway Housing

Operating across West Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire, Cottsway Housing provides and maintains rental and shared ownership properties for more than 10,000 tenants, from single-person flats to family homes.

Challenges

As a company that emphasises the importance of openness and engagement between staff and tenants, Cottsway has always relied on its internal and external telecommunications solutions. However, their legacy PBX phone system, hosted on-site, eventually became challenging and time-consuming to manage. Concerns over this single point of failure were compounded by the difficulty of simultaneously managing Microsoft Teams for internal use. This combination of legacy systems and disparate platforms meant actionable analytics were difficult to achieve, thanks to a lack of oversight of all channels of communication.

Solution 

Exponential-e proposed, designed and delivered a completely new communications ecosystem for Cottsway, utilising Direct Routing with Microsoft Teams, combined with resilient SIP trunking for external calls. This unified solution successfully consolidated Cottsway's telecommunications ecosystem while providing a range of additional tools for both internal and external communications. At the same time, to answer the ongoing need for effective analytics and reporting, Exponential-e's Contact Centre solution was deployed, allowing for all customer communications to be tracked and monitored, providing managers with comprehensive reporting and a real-time overview of customer satisfaction across the entire organisation.

The new choice of communication channels, combined with dramatically improved call quality, had a highly positive effect on Cottsway's overall levels of customer satisfaction, while staff voiced appreciation of the improved level of collaboration between teams, and the volume of high-quality training material that was now accessible online, thanks to the roll-out of automated call recording.

During 2020, and the forced move to a distributed workforce in response to COVID-19, this infrastructure proved invaluable in allowing Cottsway's teams to begin working remotely with minimal disruption, maintaining contact with their tenants through the same channels, with the same high standard of performance. 

About Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic was founded by entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson in 1984 with innovation and customer service at its core. Virgin Atlantic and its holiday business, Virgin Atlantic Holidays, employs over 5,700 people worldwide, serving 27 destinations across four continents. With a company culture that emphasises the importance of strong personal connections, a thriving partner ecosystem is essential to the continual development of Virgin Atlantic's technology infrastructure.

Challenges

In early 2017, Virgin Atlantic began the retender process for its technology network services. This was with a view to identifying opportunities for improvement, cost saving and new technologies, while simultaneously planning on simplifying and consolidating infrastructure with Virgin Atlantic Holidays. Exponential‐e had already acted as a technology supplier to Virgin Atlantic Holidays for several years, providing a range of services including data centre hosting and UK‐wide connectivity. Following this, the business was invited to tender for a series of network services including WAN, network security, WAN management and managed switching, with the aim of providing high‐performance, secure, and resilient infrastructure.

Beyond the stringent technical requirements, the tender process was focused on identifying technology partners who would be a good cultural fit with Virgin Atlantic. Both businesses share fundamental values of partnership, agility, an aligned approach to engagement and a drive to innovate. As an organisation that prides itself on creating deeply personal connections, Virgin Atlantic was keen to identify partners that would help drive the ongoing evolution of their infrastructure, rather than simply a transactional service provider.

Solution 

Following an extensive tender process, Exponential‐e were selected as one of the key technology network partners in Virgin Atlantic's network transformation and infrastructure merger.

The partnership proved a strong foundation for future growth, as shown in 2018, when a range of new services were deployed. These included tools for more reliable global remote access, which Exponential‐e successfully delivered in a matter of weeks. This proved invaluable throughout 2020, when the onset of COVID‐19 forced a move to remote working for much of Virgin Atlantic's workforce. This work was essential in helping office‐based staff to quickly adapt to new ways of working with minimal disruption.

We continue to build on these successes, allowing Virgin Atlantic people and partners to access the tools they need from anywhere. Zero compromise in security, performance and compliance underpins all work undertaken for the airline. The partnership between Exponential‐e and Virgin Atlantic highlights the value of collaboration, creativity and mutual trust when navigating an evolving digital landscape.

About GRIDSERVE

A pioneer in the field of sustainable energy, GRIDSERVE have been developing innovative solutions for transport, energy supply, industry, food and nature, ensuring environmentally friendly options can be both accessible and affordable, all over the UK. Their current focus is the deployment of their pioneering Electric Forecourts across the UK's road and motorways, providing electric vehicles with a safe, convenient and affordable way to recharge.

Solution 

Exponential-e deployed a Layer 2 VPLS, private managed WAN across the first Electric Forecourt at Braintree, hosted at two data centres and secured with Fortigate firewalls, with a further fifteen sites planned across the UK. While this differed from GRIDSERVE's original specifications, Exponential-e's deep understanding of the project's short- and long-term goals, gained during the tender process, meant they were perfectly placed to deliver a fit-for-purpose solution. This included collaborating with other GRIDSERVE partners on fabricating custom-designed cabinets to house the specialist switching that would not only ensure a successful launch, but provide optimal scalability, in line with GRIDSERVE's long-term plans for the development of these sites.

Throughout the entire deployment process, a dedicated account team were readily available to provide hands-on support and ensure targets were met. This consultative approach meant their role soon expanded beyond simply fulfilling connectivity requirements, as they worked closely with GRIDSERVE staff and other contractors to ensure the end result would prove fit for purpose.

Thanks to strong, sustained communication and collaboration throughout this project, Exponential-e have swiftly transitioned from acting as GRIDSERVE's connectivity provider to a trusted technology partner. The focus of the partnership has moved beyond ensuring high-performance connectivity was in place for the first launch site to establishing a robust foundation for further expansion, with weekly meetings taking place to identify new opportunities for enhancements and innovations across the next fifteen sites and beyond.

In this way, the future of sustainable energy in the UK is off to an exceptional start.

Challenges

The singular nature of this project meant that GRIDSERVE had highly specific requirements when it came to the technology partner that would help deploy and maintain the underlying infrastructure, providing secure, reliable connectivity across all sites for both staff and visitors, fully isolated from the charging units to ensure operational resilience.

With high expectations for the Electric Forecourts among owners of electric vehicles, it was vital that this infrastructure was not just delivered on time, ready for the planned openings, but would offer consistently high performance at all times. Furthermore, with multiple technology and construction suppliers already involved in the creation of these sites, it was essential that the connectivity provider be able to successfully collaborate and coordinate with them, in order to ensure all elements would be effectively integrated.

The specifics of the deployment - from the type of connection to the accompanying hardware requirements - had already been discussed, reviewed and confirmed, which meant it was simply a question of selecting a partner who could fulfil these requirements on time and to budget. Following a personal recommendation, Exponential-e were invited to tender and subsequently selected, having quickly established a rapport with GRIDSERVE's own teams.

About Royal Holloway, University of London

Originally two colleges that formally became part of the University of London in 1900 and merged in 1985, Royal Holloway, University of London was one of the first institutions to make higher education available to women. Today Royal Holloway continues to display world‐class research in a number of fields, well into the 21^st century, and named as one of the top 25 of all UK Universities in The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021.

Solution 

Following a competitive process, Exponential‐e were awarded a contract, based on milestones, to deliver the fundamental piece of work to enable the university's infrastructure, starting with the merging of Microsoft tenancies.

At the start of the project, Exponential‐e provided a dedicated team to lead design workshops with Royal Holloway's key stakeholders in order to define the migration processes, drawing on their deep knowledge of the existing infrastructure to deliver a comprehensive IT transformation proposal that fulfilled a range of strict T&Cs, budget, risk and continuity requirements.

From then on, continued communication was key to achieving the desired outcomes, with regular meetings taking place to ensure targets were met, budgets were adhered to, and potential complications could be pre‐emptively resolved. To enable administrative staff to continue working effectively throughout the deployment, the university's internal teams were fully briefed on the impending changes, helping to minimise disruption and ensure end users would be properly supported.

Over a 24‐day period, Exponential‐e migrated over 10,000 Office 365 user tenancies for student, alumni and test accounts - a complex operation, but one that proved the value of Exponential‐e's robust risk guarantee. The expatiated migration was achieved using 'Cloud Commander' tooling, which provided high‐speed synchronisation (up to 1TB per hour) of data between tenancies with data fidelity for a broad range of workloads. The result was a fully managed solution for all users, with a dedicated Azure AD Connect deployment and Mail, One Drive and SharePoint migrations between the existing tenancies.

In parallel, Exponential‐e worked with Royal Holloway to create a futureproof active directory, with a move to a single forest, single domain model reducing complexity and administrative overheads. In addition, this sped up authentication and replication, and helped reduce the number of domain controllers required.

A modern hybrid authentication / identity solution was implemented, making intelligent use of Azure Active Directory, ADFS and AD as appropriate. Multi‐factor authentication mitigated cyber security risk by requiring a second form of identification before allowing access to resources and data. At the same time, allowing users to use password hash synchronisation with seamless SSO provided them each with a single set of credentials with which to access services, providing a streamlined user experience that helped drive greater collaboration in the Cloud.

An expanded deployment of Microsoft Office 365 opened the door to full online university status, allowing lectures and seminars to continue via the highly regarded Microsoft Teams platform, with the new infrastructure enabling greater utilisation of the Public Cloud, delivering the increased power, flexibility, and cost control. In particular, a Virtual Desktop solution and a range of tools for multi‐channel communication and collaboration made it easy for students to submit essays and receive their marks remotely.

Finally, to provide a secure, flexible non‐production environment, replica domains and Office 365 environments were deployed, consisting of the 'bare bones' of the primary operating environment.

The partnership between Royal Holloway and Exponential‐e continues to evolve, with remote collaboration opening up new channels of learning, supported by an infrastructure with the power, flexibility and scalability to guarantee consistent performance - all while keeping the student experience at the centre of everything.

Challenges

With the onset of COVID‐19, Royal Holloway re‐focused its 2020/21 IT programme with a view to achieving full online university status, delivering teaching, learning and research through multi‐channel communication and collaboration. To achieve this, the university required a scalable, cost‐effective and high‐performance solution for remote collaboration (e.g. group chat, file sharing, notebook sharing, assessment setting), supported by the right infrastructure.

One of the major limiting factors in this regard was that staff and students were in two separate tenancies, which would need to be consolidated.

In addition to the live environment, the university required a 'non‐production' environment to facilitate controlled software development, testing, and UAT, with minimal operating costs.

With a new academic year fast approaching, it was essential that all these solutions could be delivered within an eight‐week window.

About Stephen George + Partners 

Stephen George + Partners (SGP) is one of the UK's leading architectural practices, with offices throughout the UK and Europe. It is placed in the 'Top 100' practices by the Architects' Journal and prides itself on responding rapidly to client requirements, resolving complex site issues and producing innovative designs.

Challenges

Faced with the relocation of their Head Office in Leicester to a new space they would be designing from the ground up, SGP were not only moving their central hub, but also relocating all their IT equipment. With a refresh of legacy server infrastructure already planned, this coinciding with the relocation prompted the practice to explore alternative ways to deliver apps and design data. Throughout these discussions, the security of devices and corporate data was a concern, since confidential plans and proposals being leaked would be disastrous for the practice's strong reputation.

In modernising how key applications such as Autodesk Revit and other design packages are delivered, the challenge remains regarding where the data resides. Modern visualisations and BIM models are substantial in volume and have their own data gravity, which typically required user desktops to always remain close to the source of data to avoid drops in performance.

For this reason, servers were previously deployed within each office to achieve the desired performance, availability and resilience. However, this was costly to implement and maintain, and required significant resources to manage the infrastructure across these dispersed locations. For example, patching and updating these servers was the responsibility of the inhouse IT team and was always undertaken out of hours.

Furthermore, designing and deploying a server room is costly and the end result has an inherently limited lifespan, when we consider the increasing speed of Cloud adoption. It was clear that this floorspace would be more valuable for a business-generating resource, rather than as an ongoing expense for the housing of IT assets.

Finally, a legacy on-premise phone system offered limited functionality and scalability, which would not support the expansion into new office locations, nor meet the increasing expectation amongst staff for home working options.

The relatively slow uptake of Cloud within the Architecture sector meant SGP soon found there was no pre-existing model for what they required to meet these challenges. As a result, they began evaluating potential IT partners, with a key requirement being that the chosen candidate must be able to deliver all the required services, in order to eliminate the need to manage multiple vendors and ensure an efficient migration.

Solution

Following a period of intensive evaluation, including data centre visits SGP selected Exponential-e as their new IT partner. Based on their in-depth evaluation of the project requirements, Exponential-e scaled up a resilient Network solution which connects all of SGP's locations. This was integrated with our secure Virtual Data Centre where a new server infrastructure has been built resiliently. Desktop deployment has now been provisioned using managed Virtual Desktop Infrastructure enhanced with NVIDIA graphics. Our Cisco Broadsoft Unified Communications solution has enabled effortless communication and collaboration between staff across all locations.

Exponential-e also project managed the migration from beginning to end, ensuring it was completed to schedule, with zero downtime. This included regular communication with SGP's IT team throughout, ensuring complete visibility. In the end, the migration was so seamless the users were able to log on and begin using it as soon as launch day arrived, fully embracing the new opportunities available for remote working, which later proved invaluable as the practice adapted its working environment in response to COVID-19. As Senior Partner Michael Barker explained:

"The solution has made remote working work. Previously our people were using a VPN and experiencing numerous problems. Now though, our people can do serious architectural modelling work from a service-station café if they need to. The solution works perfectly, anywhere. This gives our people so much flexibility. And it gives our organisation flexibility, too, as we look to expand."

"The IT investment we made over the previous year or so has proved to be a lifesaver during the pandemic. Not only were we able to move at 24 hours' notice to 100% homeworking without a hitch, but we have demonstrated that we can work effectively anywhere and that our business continuity plan, having now been tested in the real world, is totally effective."

Throughout the project, data protection and compliance with regulations such as the GDPR were key priorities, as SGP works with clients in a number of sectors with extremely specific compliance requirements in this regard, such as healthcare. The rigorous security standards Exponential-e operates to including annual testing of all data centre systems and inbuilt data loss protection measures provides both SGP and its customers with complete peace of mind when storing project files in the Cloud.

All in all, SGP's experience provides an object lesson in how architectural practices can benefit from the Cloud and digital transformation, and a potent illustration of why these technologies are being increasingly embraced by their industry. What digital transformation offers, beyond cost and space savings, is a better way of doing things and a clear path for future innovation. As Michael Barker summarised:

"During the solution delivery, and since then, we have never felt a loss of control from within our organisation. Far from diminishing the practice's control, the technology provided by Exponential-e and Exponential-e's management of it gives Stephen George more control of its current operations and future direction as a practice."

Solution benefits

• Seamless Cloud migration, with zero downtime
• Significant increase in online storage space
• Optimal application performance
• A successful move to remote working
• Full data security and compliance  
  

"The solution has made remote working work. Previously our people were using a VPN and experiencing numerous problems. Now though, our people can do serious architectural modelling work from a service-station café if they need to. The solution works perfectly, anywhere. This gives our people so much flexibility. And it gives our organisation flexibility, too, as we look to expand."

Michael Barker Senior Partner, Stephen George + Partners

About ABPI

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) represents innovative research-based biopharmaceutical companies, large, medium and small, leading an exciting new era of biosciences in the UK.

The ABPI is recognised by government as the industry body negotiating on behalf of the branded pharmaceutical industry for statutory consultation requirements, including the pricing scheme for medicines in the UK.

Solution 

Throughout the whole tender process it was felt that Exponential-e had a quality that couldn't be matched and as Exponential-e were already an existing supplier of a Private VPN between ABPI's 3 site, this gave ABPI the confidence that Exponential-e could handle their IT transformation requirements. Their previous experience with Exponential-e and the quality of the services that were provided meant that they were happy to engage Exponential-e for their future IT needs.

Requiring a large review of their services, ABPI instructed Exponential-e to provide them with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), 24 / 7 x 365 service desk support, an on-site engineer at their Head Office, managed service support of their applications, virtual firewalls and ongoing Network support.

During the migration to Exponential-e, ABPI were able to address a good proportion of the improvements that they were not able to facilitate with their previous supplier.

Despite a vast amount of modernisation, change in existing services and the opportunity to address all existing problems the implementation of the service was professionally handled by Exponential-e's project managers - with a smooth implementation of all services.

The end result meant that ABPI were able to simplify their IT estate, and in particular their Network, whilst selecting one supplier for all their requirements - protected by a single end-to-end SLA.

 Challenges

With 3 sites, The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) required resilient and reliable services that would enable them to carry out the important work that they do for companies across the UK.

Their relationship with their legacy provider had been tarnished due to long periods of underwhelming service, slow engagement on service improvements and the lack of a diverse product range.

This meant that ABPI were using and maintaining an aging IT environment that was no longer suitable for their needs or requirements. Their ability to adapt or improve upon this further constrained by the restrictions of their existing supplier.

Naturally the ABPI therefore had to look at other avenues, and began their research in to suppliers that could provide them with what they wanted and required. A full-scale refresh was the obvious resolution to their existing archaic infrastructure to ensure that all systems were modern and future-proofed.

Solution benefits

• With previous experience of using Exponential-e as a supplier of a Private VPN between ABPI's numerous sites, ABPI knew that they could trust Exponential-e with their business transformation.
• Throughout the tender process Exponential-e "oozed a quality that others failed to match - despite some very strong competition" and this further supported ABPI's choice to select Exponential-e for this project.
• Exponential-e's exceptionally strong technical team and professional, skilled project management team also aided in ensuring that the transformation for ABPI was fluid and confirmed that their trust in Exponential-e was well placed.
  

About Abercorn School 

Established in 1987, Abercorn School aims to offer its pupils the best start in education by providing a friendly and inspiring academic atmosphere where a true love of learning is nurtured.

The school has gained an enviable record of excellence and achievement for boys and girls from 2½ to 13 years of age. They guide both pupils and parents through the education process to ensure their pupils attain the highest standards and meet their potential.

Abercorn are firm believers in traditional values and standards. However, they are committed to embracing the best of what the 21st century will offer to aid in preparing pupils to face the challenges of the modern world with confidence and competence.

Solution 

Implementing connectivity into the new premises for Abercorn School was a priority, and a September 2015 deadline had Exponential-e working fast. From beginning to end, implementation and testing of a super-fast, low latency Internet line was installed in to the new building in just 6 weeks. This allowed the school to ensure they were up and running in time for the arrival of pupils for the new school year.

A key requirement was for the Internet to be robust and reliable, ensuring that lessons were productive for pupils and that staff were able to access resources as and when they needed to.

The next solution that Exponential-e worked to implement was a refreshed telephony system that would allow Abercorn to reduce costs and increase call quality. A Hosted Voice solution offered Abercorn "fantastic call quality" and was "very easy to use" - that alongside the cost savings it delivered meant that Abercorn implemented this solution in to their second site too.

With communication between the two sites ever increasing, it made sense for Abercorn to look in to a Smart WAN, which provides connectivity between the two sites as if they were using a single LAN. This enables faster communication and file transfer between sites, as well as allowing staff to better communicate with each other.

With space at a premium within the schools, VDCs looked like an ideal method for the school to store data and infrastructure without having to find the space for physical servers within their building. With this sitting within the Cloud, managed by Exponential-e, Abercorn could also be reassured that their servers were being proactively monitored by our 24 / 7 x 365 service desk to ensure resilient uptime.

Another benefit of the VDC solution was the fact that the school could better manage its IT budget, with the requirement to only pay for what they required - and with scalability being incredibly easy they could increase or decrease server space when necessary.

Built on trust the relationship between Exponential-e and Abercorn School has grown and grown and they continue to look to other solutions which weren't part of their initial request for services. Exponential-e was able to reassure Abercorn that the service would work by allowing them to test Internet and telephony services prior to the services officially going live. This provided the school with the confidence they needed to embark upon the relationship and implement its services.

 Challenges

When Abercorn originally approached Exponential-e their school in new premises was not yet open and they had poor connectivity within their existing building. This was therefore a priority for Abercorn, and Exponential-e were selected to provide the service.

Abercorn also had a second site which they needed to communicate with frequently. They were keen to implement increased connectivity between these sites. At the time they were using an existing phone line and spending around £500 a month on calling their other sites. This was a challenge that was resolved by a Hosted Voice solution, which Exponential-e further provided to Abercorn to enable increase communication and collaboration - whilst enabling cost savings.

Solution benefits

• Internet Connectivity - enabled school to open on time and provide both pupils and staff with a reliable, fast Internet connection.
• Hosted voice solution - means that the school are saving around £500 a month on calls between sites, with the quality of the calls also being greatly improved.
• Wide Area Network (WAN) - between sites enables more resilient connectivity, as well as allowing users faster communication with those at other locations.
• VPN Access - allowing staff to work remotely enabled access to documents and data.
  

We recognize that educational organisations need to demonstrate the highest possible standards in technology, as well as focusing on cost efficiencies to deliver ROI. Read our education booklet to discover our solutions to specific eduactional IT challenges.

About Allport Cargo Services

Founded in 1963 Allport Cargo Services operate in 30 countries, with representation in another 100.

Their Network extends to 450 offices, with more than 21,000 colleagues and a worldwide turnover exceeding £600 million.

Headquartered in Cowley, Middlesex, their 800 UK based colleagues operate out of 20 hi-tech logistics hubs, freight centres and packaging factories: picking, packing and transporting cargo globally every day for customers across a range of sectors.

Solution 

To increase the flexibility and scalability of its Network, Exponential-e worked with channel partner Ideal Networks to migrate Allport's existing Network to its VPLS Network. This solution emulates a Layer 2 VLAN allowing the nine geographically diverse sites to connect as if they were on the same LAN.

The flatter Network structure is easier for Allport to manage, and the solution has built-in resilience by incorporating dual, carrier agnostic routers at each site. As a result, Allport is able to ensure optimum Network performance at all times.

As well as receiving 24 / 7 support and technical maintenance from Ideal Networks and Exponential-e, Allport has also been able to increase the visibility of its Network via a tailored web portal, allowing them to better plan Network resources according to business demands.

 Challenges

Allport Cargo Services, a global freight, supply chain and added value logistics company, was looking to update its existing WAN infrastructure to increase resilience and responsiveness across its Network.

Allport wished to transition to a responsive service provider who could proactively support the migration and management of an upgraded Network. This move would help Allport improve the development of its critical business systems ultimately enabling the business to increase efficiency and drive productivity.

Allport was looking for a flexible and scalable WAN infrastructure to connect multiple sites across the UK. Key to Allport's business proposition is the availability and speed of data transfer across its Network. The Network underpins every process within the business and therefore the provision of a resilient and scalable Network is essential in day-to-day operations.

Allport sought a service provider that could offer not only a more scalable Network but also a management, analysis and monitoring platform. These value added services would allow Allport's IT managers to focus on internal processes and demands.

Solution benefits

• Allport has ensured its business continuity by migrating to a Network that will be able to accommodate future business expansion. By increasing its available bandwidth, Allport has seen immediate improvement and has been able to begin work upgrading its critical business processes, a task which had previously been on hold due to the previous limited bandwidth. These upgrades allow staff to respond to customers more quickly and ultimately have improved customer satisfaction.
• Through working with Ideal Networks and Exponential-e, Allport has benefited from a responsive team of engineers who can offer true 24 / 7 technical support and management across all its sites. Exponential-e is able to provide proactive monitoring and analysis of Network activity to enable Allport to respond more quickly to Network issues.

About Anthony Nolan

Anthony Nolan, now in its 40th anniversary year, was the world's first bone marrow register. The blood cancer charity has been saving lives for four decades by matching remarkable people willing to donate their bone marrow to patients in desperate need of a transplant.

Anthony Nolan operates an extensive global database of over 500,000 bone marrow, or stem cell, donors. This database enables the charity to provide over 1,000 blood cancer patients with a matching stem cell donor every year.

Solution 

Anthony Nolan decided to migrate its existing infrastructure, previously housed in its headquarters in London, to two data centre sites operated by Exponential-e in London. Key to the solution is improving business continuity through migrating the servers to these sites and therefore into dedicated off-site facilities.

Anthony Nolan chose to adopt Exponential-e's VPLS into the solution, Exponential-e's Tier 3 facilities have enterprise-class connectivity provided over a Network built and integrated for 100% uptime.

By connecting over Exponential-e's virtual private LAN, Anthony Nolan is also able to extend its own Network to capture all of its offices on one private WAN. The Network also provides dual resilience enabling further contingency and security.

 Challenges

With over 60,000 new donors registering per year, the rapid growth of the organisation and the volume of data it processes, means it is essential for Anthony Nolan to safeguard the management of its data to ensure business continuity. Registries across the world access the database 24 hours a day looking for a potential donor match for people with blood cancer.

If the database is not available or accessible, registries are not able to access it and this critical activity cannot take place.

Whilst the database must be constantly available, it also needs to be scalable. Anthony Nolan has a number of agreements with other donor databases, which are set to be incorporated into the same infrastructure - the set-up must be resilient enough to support this growth in data and the associated search requests.

In addition to this growth, the charity has targets to increase the rate of growth of registered donors, and is currently on track to achieve its target of 60,000 new donors every year. Its infrastructure must support this planned growth long-term.

Solution benefits

• Implemented private Cloud and VPLS solution.
• Future-proofed and scalable infrastructure.
• Business continuity through both Cloud and Network infrastructure.
• Data is always secure and private, across its own WAN and Exponential-e Tier 3 facilities.

About Carers Trust

Carers Trust is the largest charity working to support carers. They work to improve support, services and recognition for anyone living with the challenges of being an unpaid carer. They do this with their unique network of 116 independent carer's centres, 55 Crossroads Care schemes and 99 young carer's services.

This network of support is united by a shared vision to ensure that quality information, advice and support is available to all carers across the UK.

Solution 

With an increase in the number of remote workers, the Cloud solution recommended and implemented at Carers Trust needed to facilitate a number of business requirements. Alongside ensuring that remote workers could easily access the data and information on-demand, Carer's Trust were looking to virtualise their IT infrastructure to create even greater efficiencies.

A Fibre based WAN across the Carers Trust's five sites was implemented, inclusive of a VPLS core which linked all of the sites together. This Network included a 25Mb breakout to the Internet and a Managed Firewall, ensuring that the Network was secure and protected.

Across the Exponential-e secure and private Network they introduced a VoIP hosted service, which enabled the organisation to centralise their communications across all sites, meaning that calls could be transferred regardless of geographical location.

With a migration of IT services to Office 365 and the addition of Virtual Data Centre (VDC) services, Carers Trust was left with the bare minimum to manage and support on premise. This enabled their internal IT teams to focus on more strategic IT activities that will benefit the organisation and its future growth.

The introduction of Cloud based and virtualised services has enabled Carers Trust to be agile in the deployment of modifications to their Network and infrastructure, as well as flexible in terms of future growth.

1. With Exponential-e providing a managed service with regards to their data centres and firewall, Carers Trust was able to focus their limited IT support on the delivery of services internally. The organisation is also secure in the knowledge that their Network will be proactively monitored and can easily be managed, minimising the risk of a need to implement a disaster recovery plan in the event of a failover.
2. One of the major drivers for Carers Trust's IT project was to unite their multiple sites, particularly after the merger in 2012. This particular issue was resolved through the implementation of a 5-site WAN and hosted VoIP solution, ensuring that all employees, regardless of location, could easily communicate with each other and quickly share data and be governed by one central IT policy and an end-to-end SLA.
3. By taking Cloud based services from Exponential-e, Carers Trust has ensured that their IT infrastructure is protected, easier to manage and that there is unity across the organisation. They are enjoying the benefit of having one single supplier that has created resource, time and cost efficiencies.

 Challenges

A merger in 2012 was the primary reason for Carers Trust to look to transform their IT service provision, including the implementation of the latest Cloud based technologies and solutions.

Ensuring unity across the organisation and its employees, whilst ensuring that their infrastructure was current and fit for purpose, was vital to the success of the merger. A priority was also to ensure that employees were able to productively collaborate with each other, across the organisation, as easily as possible.

An additional requirement was the need to incorporate two more sites to the Carers Trust Network - primarily as a number of their support functions, including Finance and Commercial, were relocating to these offices to reduce operating costs.

However, with a limited IT team available internally there was a significant amount of work that needed to be done by an external service provider to ensure that the organisations core infrastructure, framework and services were modernised and managed suitably.

With a number of existing suppliers providing a variety of different Network and Telecommunications services, the organisation wanted to streamline and rationalise services by selecting one service provider that could provide all their IT infrastructure requirements. This is where Exponential-e came in.

With the ability to provide the Network, Cloud and Unified Communications services that Carers Trust needed to ensure their organisation could successfully function after the merger, Exponential-e were selected as the chosen service provider.

Solution benefits

• Internal IT resource can now be channelled into delivering IT Services thanks to virtualisation.
• Managed firewall ensures that their Network is kept secure and private.
• IT infrastructure is supported and protected by the Exponential-e 24 x 7 / 365 service desk.
• Utilisation of VDC services so that data and services are protected against onsite disaster.
• Introduction of a WAN ensured that sites could seamlessly and efficiently connect and communicate.

About Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group

The Rezidor Hotel Group is one of the fastest growing hotel companies worldwide and a member of the Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, one of the world's ten largest hotel groups.

Rezidor features a portfolio of more than 435 hotels in operation and under development with over 95,000 rooms in 71 countries.

About Channel 4

Enabling multi-platform content delivery for Channel 4's on-demand platform.

Channel 4 was the first UK broadcaster to launch an on-demand platform in 2006, 4oDTV, which quickly proved to be the most popular commercial TV service on the Internet. Since then, 4oD has continued to grow considerably each year, with 28 million monthly video views and 7.6 million unique users per month able to choose when, where and what content they watch.

Solution 

Exponential-e was selected for its Network which offers low latency, low-jitter and no packet loss. The Network was already proven in broadcasting environments with Exponential-e serving other major broadcasters.

As Exponential-e was already supplying a 1Gig fibre circuit to Channel 4, connecting various offices in London, it was a trusted partner. Andrew Bell, Technical Project Manager, Broadcast and Engineering, explained the reasons for selecting Exponential-e:

"We chose Exponential-e, as they have been a partner since May 2006 and their service has been excellent. The technology delivers and their teams ensure we enjoy a good working relationship with more than satisfactory service levels. They already had a quality broadcast network in place, so it seemed a natural choice for the latest deployment"

Exponential-e worked closely with Channel 4 to upgrade the existing Network to a 1Gbps capacity, which is capable of supporting bandwidth hungry content such as encoded video files, metadata, ancillary assets, subtitling data and images on a daily basis. The Network is highly resilient and scalable, backed by 99.99% Service Level Agreements to ensure next to no packet loss occurs; it enables real-time data delivery that is crucial in broadcast environments.

This allows for fast and efficient delivery of media rich content to a newly outsourced production facility at RedBee Media, where the preparation of non-linear content takes place, playout and transmission. Content is then distributed via Exponential-e's multiple point-to-point e-pipes to various partners and content providers, including IOKO, Home Choice, Virgin Media, BT Vision, Inqb8r and On Demand.

The upgrade enabled Channel 4 to eliminate the time-intensive use of tapes and hard drives, where content needed to be transferred to hard drives then shipped to various UK locations by couriers and post. It also no longer needs to host large FTP sites for content distribution.

Rather than relying on an antiquated manual process, we now have a Network in place that supports an automated workflow, dramatically speeding up our processes. We can now deliver a large number of content directly onto the platforms much faster, significantly freeing up internal resources and making operational cost savings" explains Andrew Bell.

Channel 4 is also looking to deploy a fail-safe backup Network in the event of a disaster situation, leveraging Exponential-e's 1GigE Connection and circuit resilience to ensure no disruptions or downtime occurs.

1. Channel 4 now has a resilient quality Network in place that can push content to multiple platforms quickly and efficiently, providing operational cost-savings and resource efficiencies. This also enables Channel 4 to meet time-to-market deadlines for service launches and deploy services in a quicker fashion.
2. Since the launch, 4oD has forged new paths into content delivery and is now available on multiple platforms, including YouTube, Seesaw, iPads, iPhones, PlayStations and on TV video on demand services.

 Challenges

Since its launch, 4oD has continued to grow considerably each year, placing an ever increasing demand on its existing distribution Network. This demand reached a peak when Channel 4 prepared to re-launch its 4oD service to provide viewers with access to all its archives. To prepare for the launch, Channel 4 needed to source a quality broadcast Network provider, capable of distributing all of its non-linear programming on a daily basis. The Network also needed to support a newly automated workflow, where a large number of content would be directly pushed onto various platforms. As a result, Channel 4 began to evaluate possible suppliers.

Solution benefits

• High-speed 1Gbps Network.
• 99.99% Service Level Agreements.
• Fail-over backup Network.
• Broadcast quality, low jitter and no packet loss Network.
  

About City Gateway

City Gateway works to transform the lives of children, young people and women who are most impacted by social and economic inequality and exclusion.

They aim to ensure that they benefit from stronger foundations for learning at school, easier transitions into adulthood, better job prospects, healthier relationships and improved mental and physical health.

They provide safe, sustainable and meaningful programmes that ensure communities develop the skills and confidence that will launch them into long-term education, employment or enterprise.

Solution 

City Gateway needed a provider that could offer them the services that they required, with a solution built for them and their needs.

They wanted the technical capability to support them and ensure delivery of the solution by the tight deadline. They also had their vision of opening schools across London in mind, so were hoping that Exponential-e could deliver on this project and many more.

Throughout the entire project, from planning through installation, implementation and go live Exponential-e supported and advised City Gateway to ensure that the process was as fluid as possible.

City Gateway now have their exact requirements, in a scalable and fully managed voice solution alongside reliable, superfast Internet Connectivity. All are able to support their infrastructure and users.

Provided on time and to budget, Exponential-e were able to surpass the expectations of City Gateway. Exponential-e continues to provide ongoing support to City Gateway and offers them technical knowledge, input and support when required.

 Challenges

City Gateway were moving from temporary accommodation in the East End of London to new premises on the Isle of Dogs. A new change of location heralded the requirement for new, reliable and cost-effective connectivity and telephony services.

The existing service provider was proving relatively expensive for the organisation and was also unable to provide all of the services that City Gateway required.

City Gateway looked for a service provider that could offer them flexible Internet connectivity and a scalable managed telephony service. They approached a number of providers to see what they had to offer and went through a rigorous selection process, eventually deciding to use Exponential-e as they felt they offered everything they were looking for.

Timing was critical for the move aligned to the implementation of the new services, as City Gateway had to open at the start of a new school term - meaning that the deadline was unavoidable.

Solution benefits

• Exponential-e offered everything that City Gateway were looking for, and delivered the solution in a timely, efficient and seamless manner.
• City Gateway are very pleased with the performance and reliability of the services, alongside the ongoing support. Their services were implemented and provided on time and on budget.
• They now have exactly what they wanted: a flexible, scalable and reliable fully managed telephony service and a reliable high capacity Internet Connection.

About Claremont High School Academy

Claremont High School Academy is a multi-specialist school which specialises in Performing Arts, Maths & Computing and Applied Learning. Based in Harrow, Greater London, the school has over 1,500 students and offers a breadth of learning opportunities. Rated 'outstanding' by Ofsted, it strives to ensure that students follow a personalised curriculum in a safe and secure, yet educationally challenging environment.

Solution 

After an in-depth solution assessment which was presented to the school's board, Exponential-e was selected to provide Claremont High School Academy with a scalable high-speed Internet service. Selection criteria included: company reputation and delivery framework, education sector experience, technology solution, cost-effectiveness and service levels.

Daniel Kirby commented: "The quality of the service has been excellent. The Connectivity is reliable and robust and we always get good response rates on the ping. The support and ongoing communications has been better than any other company that we deal with."

Exponential-e worked closely with Claremont High School Academy to ensure the new Internet service was delivered timely to coincide with the school holidays. The school's new service is delivered over an uncontended 100Mbps fibre-optic Connection with the same high-speed uploads as downloads - ensuring staff and students can quickly access and upload coursework from home. In addition, with Exponential-e's own Network integrated with the world's major content delivery Networks, such as BBC and YouTube, educational video content is only one hop away and can easily be streamed in classes without delays.

After successfully deploying the new Internet connection, Exponential-e was also approached to deliver a secure, automated Online Backup Service for the school's mission critical servers. The backup data is carried over the Internet connection via private peering to secure storage in Tier 3 UK-based Data Centres.

"Exponential-e went above and beyond all the other companies. They weren't just trying to make a sale; they're very passionate about what they do. When they invited us to come and see their Network Operations Centre and meet its employees, as well as offered to put us in contact with other schools using Exponential-e services, we knew it was the right company for us. We always receive regular phone calls from them asking how we're getting on. We just don't get that level of attention from any of our other suppliers."

 Challenges

With a growing student population and a newly installed virtual learning platform, Claremont High School Academy's bandwidth was no longer sufficient for the school's needs. The school regularly peaked in its data usage with even basic server administration tasks such as offsite backups taking a considerable time to complete. Since the school's new virtual learning platform was hosted on site, uploading and downloading coursework remotely over the Internet was a slow process. This made it inconvenient for staff and students to access the platform from home and hampered the schools ability to provide an outstanding learning experience.

Daniel Kirby, Network Manager at Claremont High School Academy commented: "We'd hit our limit in terms of bandwidth and it was really affecting our staff and students since accessing coursework could be incredibly slow. We needed to increase our bandwidth substantially and we also needed a more scalable and reliable solution."

The school was also promoting the use of educational video content from YouTube and BBC iPlayer within their classes.

However, with existing bandwidth not being sufficient, streaming video content over the Internet posed real challenges and often wasted valuable teaching time.

As a result, the school recognised the need for a change and approached a number of providers to find a more suitable Internet service capable of supporting the new technologies which are required to deliver a 21st century educational experience. Any new solution would need to be robust, reliable, scalable and cost-effective.

Features 

• Increased bandwidth capacity and performance.
• Savings on infrastructure costs by delivering multiple services over the same connection.
• Improved virtual learning experience with symmetrical upload and download speeds.

About Fidessa

Fidessa Group is a global business with scale, resilience, ambition and expertise - providing Financial Trading, investment and information solutions. 85% of the world's premier financial institutions trust Fidessa to provide them with multi-asset trading and investment infrastructure, market data and analysis, and decision making and workflow technology. $10 trillion worth of transactions flow across its global Network each year. Being a market leader, they also offer unique access to the world's largest and most valuable trading community of buy-side and sell-side professionals, from global institutions and investment banks to boutique brokers and niche hedge funds.

Solution 

Fidessa approached Exponential-e to solve this challenge after an introduction via one of its group companies, LatentZero which was already an Exponential-e customer. LatentZero knew of Exponential-e's technology and expertise and spoke highly of its potential to solve the automated failover challenge. Another key factor in choosing Exponential-e was its expertise in dealing swiftly with Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) applications.

At the start of the project Exponential-e helped by fulfilling the first requirement of obtaining Provider Independent (PI) IP addresses from RIPE NCC. To get Fidessa up and running quickly, a temporary subnet of Provider-Aggregatable (PA) IP addresses were provided by Exponential-e for the 100Mbps Internet connections installed at the primary office in Woking and the office in London. After RIPE NCC allocated Provider Independent (PI) IP addresses to Fidessa, Exponential-e smoothly facilitated the migration to the PI IP addresses from the temporary PA ones provided.

At the primary connection in Woking, a dynamic routing protocol was configured to be used during normal times. In the event of the primary connection failing, a floating, static route will automatically reroute the Internet traffic via the backup circuit in London.

The failover will then be managed by a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) session, where a lower metric is configured at Woking, ensuring it is the primary route, and a higher metric is configured in London, ensuring it is only used if there is a fault with the service at Woking. However, both locations will still be able to send outbound traffic independently as needed.

 Challenges

With so many major financial institutions relying on Fidessa and the company's commitment to providing resilient services to its customers, effective Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is imperative for the company. In a BCP situation the IT department might be dealing with ten or more different issues to resolve. Should there be a disaster, keeping resources free to resolve the issues that require manual attention is ideal.

Therefore, the challenge Fidessa faced was automating as much of its BCP as possible. Among the many Financial Trading tools and services that Fidessa provides, one of them includes delivery of web-based services, such as its award winning fragmentation analysis tools.

The company required resilient infrastructure to deliver these services to the international trading community and required automated failover to its London office in the event of a fault with the service at the company's head office in Woking.

The major problem Fidessa came across in trying to solve this challenge was that most providers did not have the technology or expertise necessary to provide automated failover in a BCP scenario.

After having dealt with a number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), needing to change IP addresses because of relocations and to become more flexible in the delivery of its web-based services, Fidessa first realised it needed to obtain its own subnet of IP addresses. Secondly, the organisation realised that the provider for Internet connectivity would need to have Network reach combined with innovative technology and know-how to deliver an automated, seamless failover between Woking and London.

Two of the world's largest communications providers were approached; however, Fidessa determined that neither organisation was flexible enough nor could they provide the type of failover desired to ensure minimum impact during a disaster. These providers required manual intervention and changes to Fidessa's core Network for failover to occur between the Woking and London offices.

This was not ideal to fulfil the company's Business Continuity plans - time and effort needed would be labour and resource intensive - taking away from where these resources could be used in a disaster situation.

About the FSA

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is an independent government department that works across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to protect public health by maintaining food safety and hygiene standards. Through a rigorous, scientific approach, the FSA ensures consumers across the UK can trust the food they eat is both safe and correctly labelled.

The environment in which we operate and the connectivity we need is rapidly evolving. Working with the Exponential-e team, we've valued their expertise in being able to migrate us from one environment to another and the innovation that they've been able to bring to that changing landscape.

Tim Lewis, Solutions Architect, Food Standards Agency

Solution 

The resulting migration involved close collaboration and coordination with other participants in the Evolve IT programme, particularly the LAN and service desk providers, in order to minimise service disruption and ensure a successful integration with the existing infrastructure. This involved multiple weekly or daily calls - covering everything from product management to solution design - which not only maintained open channels of communication, but also helped drive better customer relations - a model that continues to this day.

The resulting deployment boosted connectivity at plant sites across the UK, with a new network infrastructure that connects back to the FSA's corporate network. Secured by a centralised firewall, the network consists of the FSA's five main office sites with fibre WAN, plus all 173 plant sites. Exponential-e also took ownership of the FSA's 173 PSTN lines, in order to manage its entire plant estate. Other key elements were a resilient, high-performance centralised internet, colocation based in Enfield and SSL VPN remote access to the FSA's corporate network for 1,200 end users. Later, these new channels for remote working proved invaluable in allowing the FSA to respond quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to a 24 / 7 x 365 service desk, Exponential-e also provided a dedicated account director and service manager, who would provide tailored reporting at all meetings and play an active part in identifying and acting on new opportunities. Taking a proactive, customer-focused approach to resolving service issues has allowed Exponential-e to actively support the FSA's 'Evergreen' initiative, utilising a strategic renewal plan, where savings from unused ADSL lines are used to upgrade to FTTC, which was later extended to all FSA sites.

This hands-on support was further enhanced with centralised monitoring, utilising the Insight Advanced and Insight for Broadband solutions, which improved operational efficiency and helped drive more data-driven decision making, leading to tangible cost savings and a move towards 'internet first' strategies.

This level of agility and scalability was only achieved by developing close partnerships between the FSA, Exponential-e and other Evolve IT participants, which have continued developing since the point of inception, building on a strong, scalable foundation to support ongoing growth and deliver new innovations on a regular basis.

When your organisation is geographically spread, robust connectivity is a vital strategic asset to underpin effective remote working and access. In these situations, a good end-user experience is key, because people can't understand why such a simple thing should be so hard. The network we've implemented with the FSA is designed to create a better and more productive working environment and provide the stable platform required to meet compliance and regulation timeframes.

David Lozdan, Head of Public Sector Sales, Exponential-e

To ensure food standards and safety, it's vital for us to provide a secure, reliable communications platform with a good user experience for our team of inspectors. This has been especially true during COVID-19 where the ability to act and communicate swiftly and effectively has been essential to keeping the food supply lines safe and operational.

Tim Lewis, Solutions Architect, Food Standards Agency

 Challenges

About the Guinness World Records

For over 62 years, Guinness World Records (GWR) has produced The Guinness Book of World Records, a book that documents record-breaking achievements and that itself holds a record: having sold 141 million copies, it's the best-selling copyrighted book of all time. In spite of these gargantuan sales figures and a globe-spanning reputation, the book has been and continues to be pulled together by a relatively small (but geographically dispersed) in-house team.

As a company, however, GWR has been expanding. Today, GWR is no longer only a book publisher - it is a multimedia brand agency with key presence across Digital, Events and Business Solutions. Working with leading brands and businesses, GWR delivers bespoke marketing campaigns, using record-breaking events to create inspirational, highly shareable content.

Solution 

To kick off its Cloud migration, GWR enlisted Exponential-e to migrate 200 of its employees from the existing onpremises Exchange to Office 365. Rob Howe knew that Microsoft's cloud-based business productivity suite would help overcome the challenges to collaboration posed by the company's geographic spread, enabling its workforce to collaborate to deliver engaging experiences and capitalise on market opportunities across the globe.

He also knew that Exponential-e would be the perfect partner to see GWR through this crucial first phase towards digitisation. Exponential-e had been providing critical communications services to GWR - from private connectivity between UK data centres and GWR's Beijing office to 10Gbps connectivity and hosted telephony - for close to five years. The mutual trust and understanding that this work had built between GWR and Exponential-e laid the groundwork for a remarkably speedy and successful Office 365 transition.

As Howe comments: "Our previous experience with Exponential-e gave me peace of mind. I know that they do what they say they will." Laying the foundations for a "painless" project Planning for the project began in July 2017. By September, work had started, with the core migration completed, as planned, in November. In order to complete a complex migration in less than three months, Exponential-e's team had to ensure the process would go off without a hitch.

And, in fact, it did: looking back on the process, Rob Howe describes the migration as "painless". In his view, this painlessness of execution was due largely to Exponential-e's meticulous planning.

"They are really good at going through things in detail and making sure they understand the business and key dates, rather than just the technology," says Howe.

Office 365 is also playing a crucial part in enabling GWR' IT department to transform its business function. It is proving extremely effective in helping the department to execute its strategic goal of supporting flexibility and mobility. Again, OneDrive provides a striking example to illustrate this, eliminating the need to move user files between machines, and greatly reducing the time it takes for the IT department to roll out PCs and devices to staff. Howe: "We've gone from rolling out one machine in a day and a half to rolling out two a day, which is a big improvement."

A key milestone on the path to the future It's improvements like this that are freeing GWR's IT department up to play a more proactive role in the wider business. And this, as Howe explains, is in turn helping GWR as a whole to move forward with its technology agenda and expand as a business:

"The Office 365 project has allowed our department to take a big step forward in becoming more flexible and responsive - and less reactive - to the business. It's allowing us to get out in front, which is key, especially as we continue to expand and diversify as a business and add new services."

The "painless" success of this project, GWR's first major foray into cloud, has been crucial in giving Rob Howe and his colleagues the confidence to continue heading in the direction of digitisation. "Going forward, every year there will be something new we're looking to expand into," he says, "so this was a key first step, and if it hadn't gone smoothly it would have made everything else far more challenging."

The Office 365 project has allowed our department to take a big step forward in becoming more flexible and responsive – and less reactive - to the business. It's allowing us to get out in front, which is key, especially as we continue to expand and diversify as a business and add new services.

Rob Howe IT Director, Guinness World Records.

 Challenges

"We cannot be confined by old ways of working…"

The rapid growth and diversification of GWR as a business over the past five years has equired a radical rethinking of its technology requirements. Under the guidance of Rob Howe, IT Director at GWR for six years, the company has pursued a strategy of digitisation, encompassing infrastructure, service delivery and security.

This strategy is underpinned by an overhauling of GWR's internal setup from an infrastructure and applications perspective. GWR's IT department has embraced the cloud, recognising that this supports the business's push to become more flexible, agile and dynamic in order to cope with the demands of a growing business.

Rob Howe explains: "It is the IT department's job to make sure we can respond to the ever-growing changes within our business model, so we can take up new opportunities and move into new markets. Going forward, cloud gives us far more flexibility to grow, rather than being constrained, and that's always my focus – that we have more options than less."

GWR is a truly global company; in the last six years the company's corporate footprint has oubled from three offices to six, with sites in London, Miami, New York, Dubai, Beijing and Tokyo, with additional remote workers placed at over 15 locations.