About Gloucester City Homes

Gloucester City Homes is an independent social landlord providing excellent housing management services to over 5,200 tenants. They own and manage around 4,500 rented homes, 501 sheltered housing properties, 270 leasehold properties, 25 commercial units and 21 homeless units.

They are recognised as one of the best housing providers in the country through independent accreditation, including the cabinet office Customer Service Excellence Standard. Gloucester City Homes has ambitious plans to invest in tenants homes, build new homes and create new job opportunities as a major employer in the city of Gloucester.

Solution 

As part of the engagement, Gloucester City Homes wanted to ensure its IT infrastructure refresh would result in better customer service standards. Since all services are delivered down a single piece of fibre, Gloucester City Homes has the flexibility to easily scale or adapt its infrastructure to meet its changing needs. In addition, Exponential-e provided managed service support and security assurance so that GCH didn't have to invest large amounts of resource in managing the system.

As part of becoming a digital-first organisation, Exponential-e provided GCH with Hosted Data Centre services, Server Replication to a second Data Centre as well as Managed Firewall, Infrastructure support. Exponential-e's super-fast 100 Gig Ethernet Network delivered the virtual desktop infrastructure that provides employees with access to a persistent, personal desktop from any device or location for all 120 staff.

In just a short space of time GCH has already seen the benefits that a secure and stable infrastructure delivers. Staff can now move from a desk to a meeting room to home and pick up their desktop in exactly the same state as they left it.

GCH recently underwent a programme where its 5,200 tenants needed to renew their tenancy agreements as part of its separation from the council. Previously this would have been a manual, paper-based process. However, the flexibility of the infrastructure has meant that GCH have been able to use a combination of mobile phones and laptops to run events that allow tenants to refresh their agreements from designated locations throughout the city, something that was more convenient for its tenants and enabled more efficient processing. Instead of tenants completing vast amounts of paperwork and staff entering this on to the system manually, the information could be processed immediately on-site.

Staff at GCH experienced a noticeable improvement to user-experience with quicker log-in and load times, as well faster processing time for data / screen refreshes. For the organisation, this brings significant productivity gains.

• Gloucester City Homes has enabled its employees to work in a more productive way; there has been an increase in the allowance of flexible working, primarily due to the solution provided by Exponential-e allowing employees to work on the same work applications from any location. This in turn leads to better satisfaction amongst the workforce and also improved customer service levels.
• The replication of server data to a second Data Centre means that Gloucester City Homes can rest assured they are protected in the event of a disaster. They can promptly and easily access their data from a secondary source and quickly get their business up and running again if the need arises.

 Challenges

Gloucester City Homes (GCH) has successfully transitioned from operating as an arm's length management organisation with all its ICT infrastructure and services being provided by the local council, to an independent body with complex backend demands controlling everything from renewing tenancy agreements to managing burst drains. The transition has given GCH independent control over housing assets and necessitated all tenants to sign new occupancy agreements.

The separation from the council gave GCH the opportunity to refresh their IT strategy and transfer to new IT infrastructure. They wanted a provider that could offer a diversity of provisioned services and ensure they continue improving customer service levels. In terms of previous support, they had an in-house team managing applications; but also used costly outsourced technical and support resources. A need to enable their staff to work remotely and from various locations, such as within the homes of tenants, also meant that they were looking for a provider that could deliver a remote desktop service and increase the productivity and flexibility of their employees.

About Havas

Solution 

Exponential-e worked closely with Havas to design a solution that would remove the complexity and duplication from the existing infrastructure and consolidate all 16 sites into a central Network, while ensuring each business unit remained secure from each other. Exponential-e engineers were able to overcome this challenge with a relatively simple Network design.

Single access points - To accommodate Havas' requirements, we deployed a multi-site Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) WAN solution using single, converged connections from each of the Havas offices. Each Havas business unit is now supported by our resilient Next Generation Network.

VPLS communities - To consolidate Havas' disparate WANs we needed to discover which agencies needed to be able to talk to each other. Once we had this information, we were able to group agencies into different VPLS pools to create mini-WANs. The fact that we were able to maintain LAN and WAN separacy means the solution is operationally simplistic and it gives Havas maximum control.

Centrally hosted hardware and services - We co-located the firewalls across two separate data centres using VLANs into the firewall. This means Havas can now benefit from centrally hosted firewalls which it has complete control over. Havas are able to change security policies and routing itself from one central point. The company also has centrally hosted Internet connectivity removing considerable complexity, duplication and cost from its wide area Networking.

Resiliency - Our pioneering NGN design in this instance was based on providing resilient and automated failover to secondary circuits at each site, whereby the local router will switch traffic automatically into the secondary circuit in the event of a failure on the primary circuit. In addition, we provided resilient connections to the centralised firewall to achieve automatic failover on the Internet service.

Convergence and separation - We created one unified Network but managed to maintain 100% security and separation for its individual business units. Most importantly Havas is in control and unnecessary cost and duplication have been eliminated.

 Challenges

There were a number of issues Havas had with its old Network. Firstly, the IP VPN solutions it was using required highly complex access-control lists on each site's CPE router to keep different business unit traffic secure from each other. This was proving very inflexible, time consuming and an administrative headache.

Havas' Network had also grown to include multiple Internet services which were operated by many of the individual business units. As a result of this, the company was having to manage multiple firewalls and Internet service suppliers which was proving to be an area of concern.

The business wanted to consolidate its Network of disparate Wide Area Networks (WANs) into one unified platform, whilst maintaining security between business unit communities. At the same time it wanted to centralise its Internet provision and security services so the company could eliminate a complex array of providers, bandwidths and underlying technologies.

About InterQuest Group

InterQuest Group (InterQuest) is a market-leading IT and Analytics recruitment firm, which comprises a number of specialised recruitment units that operate specifically in one market segment, be it in the public sector, banking and finance, or in an area of technology such as testing, analytics or CRM. The Group operates from its head office in London and several branch offices. Specialising in contract and permanent IT recruitment, the Group trades as several distinctly branded, operating divisions.

Solution 

A number of established and well-known suppliers within the market were considered for project delivery. InterQuest selected Exponential-e based on its technical expertise, receptive approach and value.

Exponential-e worked closely with InterQuest to deploy an eight site Wide Area Network (WAN) which extended between Yorkshire and Kent, as well as centralised Internet, security and backup solutions. Exponential-e began work with a redesign of InterQuest's existing infrastructure. The first phase of the network roll-out started with the various locations being brought on-net to Exponential-e's switched core Next Generation Network (NGN) for improved resilience.

The following phase saw Exponential-e provisioning virtual circuits over the access circuits required, allowing Exponential-e to establish full connectivity between all InterQuest office locations. By centralising the Internet connection in Exponential-e's facility, the Group's branch offices are no longer reliant on the head office for Internet connectivity, allowing for a more agile and flexible set-up.

In addition, Exponential-e configured a dedicated VPLS instance for InterQuest, providing a completely secure WAN. Exponential-e provided a Private DSL connection from the site through a new Virtual LNS instance into the existing InterQuest VPLS WAN. The new solution allows InterQuest to route voice over its internal network and save costs.

 Challenges

InterQuest was experiencing several issues with its existing network service. It had previously moved to a DSL based MPLS network, but still faced issues with inconsistent speeds. The service was proving to be unreliable and the company repeatedly faced prolonged downtime affecting business operations for days at a time.

Due to continued business success, InterQuest had grown to become a multi-site operation over the years; each specialist recruitment division operated as an individual business unit whilst some services within these were centralised. Many sites however, had started to experience performance issues and latency, and as a result they were becoming increasingly dependent on InterQuest's London head office.

The company was also finding its existing provider was unable to respond to its needs in fast time frames and connectivity was often lost, hence affecting inbound and outbound business communication. InterQuest had reached a point where its old network service was not reliable or fast enough to keep up with the demands and growth of the business.

The Group started searching for a new solution which was able to provide improved service levels, increased speed and cost savings on routing voice calls internally. With a view to plan long-term, InterQuest also sought a scalable platform which could grow with its business requirements.

About Jellyfish Pictures

Solution 

Jellyfish Pictures has partnered with Network and Cloud Provider Exponential-e to develop a new Cloud platform known as Desktop-as-a-Service for Graphic Processing Units (GPU) powered by NVIDIA GRID™ technology, which enables employees to work remotely without effecting quality, productivity or creativity. They can now utilise persistent virtualised desktops with all of their usual computing power, software applications and intensive creative tools. All their documents and files from their local storage are accessed directly from the virtual desktops giving seamless integration between Cloud resource and local network. Graphic artists and editors can work as if they were using a physical workstation, the new Cloud machines perform up to 3-4 times faster than normal desk-based computers performing like-for-like tasks as well as achieving 25-30 frames per second. This improves the productivity of graphic artists and enables the company to deliver faster turnaround to meet tight production deadlines.

Crucially, it also means that employees are no longer tied to a physical desk and have the ability to work from any device and any location, making the company highly flexible when bidding for future work. It has also supported other developments within the Jellyfish Group including the opening of their new purpose built, 4,000 square foot studio in Brixton, where 60 artists and supporting production staff are based. The new system means that work can be shared between studios, so that employees and contract/remote workers can collaborate on projects despite being based in separate offices.

Using Exponential-e's low latency, private Network powered by NVIDIA GRID™ technology gives the graphic artists access to all of the creative tools they need, from Nuke to Softimage, virtually, from any device anywhere in the world.

As they're essentially accessing a Data Centre, Jellyfish's creative team can harness the power of the platform for both application performance and rendering, but with asset management and storage taken care of too - so nothing would be lost if a computer or terminal crashed or failed.

"The nature of the VFX industry is project-based, and we often require technology resources and freelancers on demand. Exponential-e's solution enables us to respond quickly to these fluctuating project requirements" explains Jeremy Smith, CTO of Jellyfish.

"Scaling up and down for productions - where you might be operating remotely from several locations, such as on set, on location and in the studio, at speed with security and privacy center stage - is difficult to say the least. Operationally, we no longer need to rely solely on our existing architecture when further processing power or capacity is required. Instead, our staff can spin-up additional resources on demand."

Exponential-e's Cloud platform built on NVIDIA's GRID™ technology uses servers packed with high-performance GRID GPUs. VMWare's Horizon VDI platform provided the virtulisation, the low latency 100GigE Network between Jellyfish's two studios means that graphic artists using the virtualised desktops doesn't cause any problems with screen refreshes and rendering. With multi-million dollar production budgets in play the security of desktop virtualisation is of paramount importance. However, the hosted service that Jellyfish uses remains within its Local Area Network (LAN) and on the clean side of the firewall, meaning it doesn't transcend the public Internet. As a result, security and privacy concerns are negated.

This investment in Network resources was absolutely critical as the performance of all Cloud services are directly dependent on the speed of the network infrastructure, with which it connects to the Data Centre. When Jellyfish artists are working round the clock in different studios to a strict deadline, removing all potential loss of productivity from lag is vital.

 Challenges

Today, the firm behind the BBC's Inside the Human Body, Planet Dinosaur and commercials such as Peckish, sofaworks Sloth - Neal and the Natural History Museum Alive 3D, strives to remain at the forefront of technology and design by offering something extra, both in terms of creativity and approach.

Early in 2013 Jellyfish Pictures outgrew their Noho base in Margaret Street. Restrictions on power and space and with office space at a premium the challenge was to find a solution that would keep them in the heart of London's thriving VFX community without compromising on quality and client service.

Solution benefits

• The virtualised desktop environment has changed the way Jellyfish works and competes in the industry - the company is now capable of moving from a capital expenditure business model to an operating expenditure structure. This reduces much of the upfront costs when Jellyfish expands to take on a big project assuring that they can align budgets with projects. For the first time, the company can be highly flexible and confident when bidding for new work.
• Even more valuable, GRID™ technology has removed the chains between artist, studio and desktop.
• Jeremy Smith explains, "In the past, the huge amounts of processing power needed for VFX work meant that our artists, designers and developers were tied to a physical desktop. But now, the traditional VFX workstation has been transformed - by adopting a hybrid, Cloud-based platform we can work from anywhere and on any supported device. Through our work with Exponential-e and NVIDIA, we are able to create a system that allows work to be shared in real time between our studios so that our employees and contract/remote workers can effectively collaborate on projects all on the same logical workspace.
• Today, Jellyfish can foster a much more creative environment for its employees. Not only can they can easily share work in real-time between their two studios, work seamlessly from virtually any device and from any location, they're also able to hire the best creative, talent, regardless of whether or not they prefer to work remotely."
  

About Middlesex University

Solution 

Middlesex University is a global institution and innovator that continuously seeks to utilise technology to enhance learning, teaching and working across its campuses. The use of Cloud technology and the managed services Exponential-e provides will enable the University to significantly enrich the student and staff experience.

Using the flexibility provided by the Cloud, Middlesex University will be able to easily turn on additional services, such as server provisioning, central processing units (CPU) and Network bandwidth to ensure that reliable, modern hardware is underpinning systems and activities at all time. The flexible service provides Middlesex University with the agility to scale services to cater for short periods of time when additional capacity is required, for example, in response to new multi-partner academic research projects. It also means that test and development environments can be scaled back when they are not required to achieve further cost savings.

Spearheading the project is David Lozdan, Head of Public Sector for Exponential-e, who confirmed that:

"Moving to the Cloud will ensure that Middlesex University can continue enriching the learning and working experience of more than 45,500 students globally and 1,700 staff by easily extending the use of new applications as they become available. Exponential-e will deliver the supporting platforms and services that will enable Middlesex University to concentrate on achieving its vision; to strengthen student achievement, bolster student satisfaction, support leadership and enhance staff performance."

To deliver a highly secure and resilient platform, the Cloud technology is seamlessly integrated into Exponential-e's wholly owned high capacity Network, ensuring that hosted services reside on the clean side of the firewall. Using the Network, the University will also gain greater visibility into the activity that is taking place across its infrastructure to better manage its capacity, quickly respond to changing demands and provide robust security incident and event management.

 Challenges

Middlesex University has selected British Cloud and Network provider Exponential-e, to enhance research opportunities and learning experiences for students and staff, while driving greater business efficiency. Exponential-e will use its UK based Data Centres to provide on demand Cloud technology, which enables a fast and flexible environment that supports the University's wide-ranging activities.

About Montcalm Hotel

From the West End to the City, and beyond to trend-setting Shoreditch, The Montcalm Luxury Hotels echo the unique fusion of heritage and cutting edge that defines London itself.

Every Montcalm property is unique and is situated near iconic London landmarks. Lavished with breathtaking suites, award-winning restaurants and exquisite event spaces, each property has been designed by renowned architects to capture each hotel's unique location and character.

With acclaimed restaurants and bars, state-of-the-art spas, intelligent technology and advanced business facilities, the Montcalm experience epitomises next generation London luxury.

Solution 

Using its wholly owned Network, Exponential-e is delivering a Wide Area Network (WAN) that connects all 18 sites in The Montcalm Hotel Luxury Hotels. The Royal London House by Montcalm Finsbury Square London site has 10 Gig Network capacity, which ensures the hotel has the agility to quickly share information and can respond to customer demands. In line with this, the WAN will be combined with High Bandwidth Internet that is delivered using a single piece of Fibre to offer clients a scalable Internet connection. Being able to provide Bandwidth to different areas of the hotel from a supplier they trust, was a high priority for Montcalm. The high-capacity, low latency Bandwidth will ensure that the flagship hotel has the flexibility to cope with peaks in Network usage to meet the needs of its guests, events and business processes.

In an industry that competes on exceeding expectations, delivering a powerful Internet Connection is key to meeting the demands of its hyper-connected guests. The scalable infrastructure will allow The Montcalm Luxury Hotels to portion off a dedicated section of its Bandwidth for operations. In addition, since all services sit on the clean side of the Firewall, the hotel can be reassured that it is offering customers a Secure Network that is compliant with PCI DSS regulations and safely delivers customer data.

Upon implementation, The Royal London House by Montcalm Finsbury Square became the first in the UK to boast 10Gig Capacity, both up and down. "We now have Connectivity that is on a par with large media organisations or broadcasters, which is unheard of in the UK" explained a spokesperson at The Montcalm London Marble Arch. "Exponential-e provides us with visibility into the level of Internet traffic running over our Network so that we have the flexibility to scale Bandwidth up or down to reflect the facilities that our guests are using and the number of applications running over our Network. For example, when we have conferences, video calls and live demos happening simultaneously, then Bandwidth can be instantly scaled to meet demand whilst ensuring that all hotel guests benefit from a rich user experience".

With 24/7 x 365 support provided by Exponential-e, alongside a dedicated sales team, the implementation of the service was managed by Exponential-e from beginning to end. The Montcalm Luxury Hotels are now looking to implement the Exponential-e Network and infrastructure across six more hotels, including their newly launched Shoreditch property.

 Challenges

With some of the most recognised luxury boutique hotels in the capital, The Montcalm Luxury Hotels are known for their premium customer experience across their 5* hotels.

With 250 rooms at their Finsbury Square location, The Montcalm Luxury Hotels were looking to improve their technology and Connectivity throughout the building.

The Montcalm Luxury Hotels are recognised as technology leaders within the industry, and their Network Connection.

With changing demands, both within the industry and guest expectations, a reliable, superfast Internet Connection and Network were essential for The Royal London House by Montcalm Finsbury Square London City. They needed to be sure that the new service would withstand high usage peaks at events, alongside that of guests and employees. Having a service that could scale and be flexible was a key driver for the project.

After rigorous assessment of the market, The Montcalm Luxury Hotels selected Exponential-e as their preferred supplier. In July 2014 they signed and the implementation of the service began.

Features

• Improved guest and customer experience.
• Increased revenue for events.
• Highly flexible solution.
• Dedicated and scalable bandwidth.
• Ability to access further services through single pipe.

Whatever your star rating, its still all about customer experience and service is at the heart of the hotel industry. Ensuring guests are catered for 24 x 7 means facilities need to be fully accessible. This includes access to fast Internet, HDTV and state-of-the-art guest systems. Download our Hotels booklet for more information on the solutions we can offer the industry.

About Morningstar

Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The organisation offers an extensive line of products and services for individuals, financial advisers, and institutions.

Morningstar U.K. opened in London in 2000 and launched its investing website in 2001. The website offers access to objective information on more than 9,000 funds available to individual investors in the U.K

About Price Bailey

Founded in 1938, Price Bailey is a leading firm of chartered accountants and business advisers operating throughout the UK, with global connections. Their clients range from high net worth individuals to publicly listed businesses.

Price Bailey has 26 partners and over 300 professional and support staff. It has eight offices situated in East Anglia, London, the Channel Islands and the Caribbean - serving local SMEs.

Solution 

A key requirement for Price Bailey was the need to review their existing WAN. Exponential-e took on the project of implementing a new WAN which enabled Price Bailey to benefit from improved connection speeds of up to 25 times faster than their previous Network. Plus, by utilising Exponential-e's Network they were able to increase the control over their bandwidth and access services privately and securely.

Their in-house Data Centre was no longer suitable and so Price Bailey agreed to move in to one of Exponential-e's Data Centres. Not only did this mean that they now receive a managed service which flags up any issues pro-actively and is within a state of the art secure facility, but it also provides enhanced disaster recovery facilities – enabling Price Bailey to have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place should they need to use it.

Their aging phone system, which had been in place over 20 years, was no longer fit for purpose and so the process of moving their existing telephone system on to a hosted system began. This process continued across the business's estate of offices and has enhanced communication functionality for employees. The new phone system also provided the firm with additional reporting metrics and enhanced security.

As their existing Citrix server farm could no longer handle the speed of growth and requirements for use, Price Bailey instead implemented a Desktop-as-a-Service solution. This allowed them to increase the number of seats that they could provide whilst lessening the strain on their existing legacy infrastructure. In future it will also allow them to increase provisioning of virtual desktops as required - meaning that they can easily match the growth of the firm, and adjust spend aligned to this.

 Challenges

Price Bailey had an existing Wide Area Network (WAN) that had been in place since 2008 and, despite upgrades, it couldn't cope with the growth in their business – both in terms of staff and office locations. As the firm continued to grow they were faced with issues of slow speed and poor connectivity, which led to frustration for users and also a decrease in productivity.

Their IT services were primarily based in-house, but with their fast paced growth this was no longer the ideal solution. Instead Price Bailey decided that they needed to outsource some of this and instead rely on managed services that would be able to support their business growth.

In 2014 Price Bailey were looking to relocate one of their offices, and merge it with another, to create their largest site yet. This involved a great amount of work and was not something that could be managed internally.

As part of this move and merger Price Bailey needed to review their existing WAN, relocate their in-house Data Centre, review their Disaster Recovery plan, upgrade their telephone system (which had been in place since the 1990's) and review their struggling Citrix server farm.

Not only was there a requirement for all this to be done, but it had to happen within just 3 to 4 months, a timeframe that was too tight for the Price Bailey team to handle themselves - and why they instead looked to Exponential-e for assistance.

Features

• Network is up to 25 times faster.
• Managed Data Centre services replace an in-house Data Centre, enabling the IT department to do more whilst the company's key assets are protected.
• Migration to the Exponential-e telephony system has allowed employees to embrace the benefits of more advanced features and functionality.
• VDI has enhanced the opportunities for employees to work in remote locations, and also reduced the strain on their legacy systems.
  

About Metropolitan Thames Valley

Metropolitan Thames Valley (MTV) is a registered social landlord, based in Twickenham, South West London. The organisation owns, manages or administers loans for over 14,500 properties in London, Berkshire, Surrey, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Sussex. It provides affordable rented homes, shared ownership, market rent, student and key worker accommodation, working with eight NHS Trusts. Since its launch, MTV has maintained a successful record of growth and now has over 220 employees spread across its headquarters in Twickenham and seven site offices.

Solution 

Exponential-e was selected to design and deploy a new fully converged nine site Network for MTV after being selected following a rigorous tender process. Deciding factors included proposed technology solution, level of technical expertise, housing association experience, company reputation, project management, quality of references, service level agreement and cost-effectiveness.

Exponential-e worked closely with MTV to design a flexible and cost-effective solution which would assist the move between MTV's existing headquarters and its temporary headquarters during the refurbishment, whilst providing a short-term solution to the organisation's traffic laden Internet circuit.

A nine site Wide Area Network (WAN) over Exponential-e's Layer 2 Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) Network was designed to connect the headquarters in Twickenham to three office sites and four remote sites. The robust WAN solution will ensure that MTV's services run smoothly during this period of transition and can cope with increasing capacity demand.

MTV also needed a Network versatile enough to support a range of large applications such as VoIP, Civica's Universal Housing system and Citrix's remote access suite, as well as being able to absorb any extra Network traffic generated.

The organisation's new protocol-agnostic next generation Network designed by Exponential-e, easily accommodates for any additional large applications or changes in Network bandwidth demand.

 Challenges

With a number of years of continuous growth, TVH's existing Network had reached capacity and was unable to support the organisation's requirements. It faced limited amounts of bandwidth at crucial points on its Network, hampering its ability to operate efficiently and provide good customer service.

TVH's ICT Infrastructure Manager, Gerard Brown explained: "We had reached a point where we had to restrict traffic during various times of the day. But this still wasn't enough with all our remote offices coming in on one connection with very limited bandwidth."

After the organisation decided to relocate its headquarters temporarily for a year in order to undergo refurbishment, TVH quickly realised how restricted it was by the inflexible nature of legacy technology on which its current Network was based.

As a result, TVH decided to seek other options and sent out a tender for a new Network. Its new Network needed to support a wide range of large applications, be cost-effective and provide a high level of flexibility to cater for the temporary relocation of its headquarters.

Brown elaborated: "Our current Network wasn't up to the job or flexible enough to allow us to move with it. Extending it would have been very expensive as we would have had to add a lot of extra components. Exponential-e has taken VPLS technology that bit further, making our whole Network feel like one big Network, even with our remote office sites - effectively making our remote sites appear as if they are part of the same building. Exponential-e was able to provide the glowing reference and the technical expertise we needed to manage the relocation of our headquarters - making our choice simple."

By changing Network supplier, even though we had to break out of the existing contract early and pay a penalty fee, it still worked out more cost-effective to implement the new Network with Exponential-e. In addition, we can now run multiple services across our Network, which allows shared services between departments - making our assets go even further.

Gerard Brown ICT Infrastructure Manager, Metropolitan Thames Valley

About The Barbican Centre

The Barbican Centre (The Barbican) is one of the world's leading arts centres, founded and run by the City of London Corporation. It encompasses dance, film, music, theatre, visual arts and creative learning who work together in creating the model of tomorrow's international arts and learning centre.

The architecturally renowned Centre, now Grade II listed, opened in 1982 and comprises the 1,949 seat Barbican Hall, the 1,166-seat Barbican Theatre, the Pit theatre, a 286 seat cinema, the Barbican Art Gallery, a second gallery The Curve, foyers and public spaces, a library, Lakeside Terrace, roof-top tropical conservatory, conference facilities and three restaurants.

Solution 

After comparing a number of solution providers rigorously, Exponential-e was chosen to deploy a 100Mbps fibre Internet connection. The deciding factors were Exponential-e's professional and responsive approach in designing a solution, its expertise in fibre-based network solutions and experience in the Leisure and Hospitality sector.

Exponential-e provided The Barbican with a significant increase in bandwidth. The additional bandwidth immediately addressed usability issues experienced by Internet users. The extra capacity also provided The Barbican with the scalability needed to create a dedicated WiFi zone for visitors.

The Internet connection provided by Exponential-e enabled The Barbican to deliver multiple services over one connection by splitting VLANs. This meant The Barbican could set and change the bandwidth dedicated to specific services with a few simple keystrokes. This additional flexibility meant that key services such as WiFi or booking services no longer compete for bandwidth. The simplicity in making changes to this service also means that The Barbican is able to provide corporate clients with their own dedicated Internet access to support their events.

 Challenges

The Barbican was looking to maintain its position as a world-class venue in a very competitive marketplace. In order to broaden its appeal to corporate clients, The Barbican implemented a £14.1m refurbishment of its conference facilities.

In line with these improvements, The Barbican decided to upgrade its existing 2Mbps copper-based Internet connection, which was being used to capacity. This was having an adverse effect on the speed of web-based services. Applications such as ticketing systems, internal e-mail and WiFi services slowed down as they competed for bandwidth. The Barbican's existing 2Mbps connection also meant there was limited bandwidth capacity to support the growing demand for Internet access at corporate events, conferences and seminars held at The Barbican.

The Barbican decided to upgrade from its copper-based Internet service to a 100Mbps fibre-based Internet connection. A robust failover option would also be installed to provide additional resiliency for Internet services. The additional bandwidth would allow The Barbican to address the immediate issue of slow speeds suffered by Internet users, provide Internet access to corporate clients in keeping with The Barbican's world-class reputation and improve the resiliency of Internet services.

In addition, the project team faced the challenge of adopting a new set of IP addresses. A knock-on effect of this would be the need to re-configure firewalls and make network address translation (NAT) changes. The project team would have to undertake an overnight migration to minimise disruption to visitor services during business hours.

Exponential-e impressed us with its professionalism and know-how in designing a solution to meet our needs. The solution was more cost-effective than the alternatives and was delivered by an expert project team.

Dominic Smith The Barbican.

About The Careys Group

The Carey Group, established in 1969, is a leading multidisciplined construction and resource recovery group, operating across the UK and Ireland. Careys deliver innovative, safe and sustainable solutions to the most complex challenges.

They are unique within the construction industry as they have in-house specialist capabilities in asbestos, demolition, civil engineering, dry lining, house building and resource recovery. Their combined service capabilities means they can deliver consolidated programmes with reduced project costs, consistency and effective management of construction risks.

Solution 

To fulfil The Carey Group's primary IT requirements Exponential-e was tasked to move their data across to a platform that used a combination of our private, secure Cloud platform and Microsoft Office 365. We were able complete the project in just 3 months whilst ensuring zero downtime during the transition period.

Our team of Professional services managers successfully completed the transition from start to finish, ensuring that everything went smoothly and impressing the Carey Group with their high levels of support and competence.

The fact that Exponential-e already supplied their 100GigE low latency WAN solution to Careys meant that they had the confidence in us to design and implement a robust technical solution that was aligned to their IT strategies.

Our solution was underpinned by our resilient Network - ensuring that Carey's had the best base from which to launch their Cloud and email platform.

By using an outsourced model managed by Exponential-e, Carey's made cost efficiencies as they eliminated the time internal IT staff traditionally spent managing their email systems.

The change from a capital expenditure to operating expenditure model has allowed Carey's to directly apportion a predictable monthly cost to the service.

Equally with the scalability of the solution, the cost of operations has decreased and the overall system is far more cost effective.

• One of the primary benefits of the implementation of this solution is that it is cost effective and fits with the company's OPEX model.
• The company has seen a reduction in the time their IT department needs to spend in managing their email system. Through the combination of our ongoing support and the use of Office 365, their email system will be fully managed and any patches or updates applied.
• Inbox storage capacity increased across the company.
• By using Exponential-e the movement of user data and the implementation of the new system were completed without any disruption to the business and took only 3 months to implement. This allowed the business to quickly move from one solution to another, without having to face any system downtime.
• The storage capacity of their email system was increased through use of this new solution, which was a benefit for all employees within the company.

 Challenges

Faced with ageing internal email infrastructure that they were unable to fully manage and support, the Carey Group looked to find a solution that would allow them to move their data to a private Cloud platform whilst also utilising Microsoft Office 365. By outsourcing this service to Exponential-e they were able to ensure that they had a secure and resilient solution that was scalable and fully met their business needs.

The Carey Group's primary challenge was how to move their email data for their 1000+ users across to the new platform whilst ensuring the implementation was completed swiftly and smoothly to avoid business disruption, yet maintaining data integrity.

With their existing WAN provided by Exponential-e they looked to us to provide the professional services to make both a successful data transition and also ensure ongoing support for the day to-day management of the solution.

Exponential-e offered us a complete WAN solution that was technically superior to anything else we looked at, backed up by plain speaking people who have made the transition from a complicated in-house solution far easier than we ever envisaged.

Matt Coniam Head of ICT, The Careys Group.

About Vita Group

Formed over 60 years ago, the Vita Group operates internationally, supplying a vast range of foams for applications ranging from transportation, general industry, construction, furniture and bedding to packaging.

With 36 sites in 14 countries, they work with their customers to create innovative, quality products. Their aim is simple - to be the best in the markets in which they operate.

Solution 

With a new and improved WAN being a key requirement for the Vita Group, this was one of the first things that they looked to tackle with Exponential-e. Migrating to a WAN on the Exponential-e Network enabled them to access a wider range of services, and is supported by 24 / 7 x 365 proactive customer support - therefore meeting all the requirements that the Vita Group had for their migration.

Not only did this move assist in enabling the business to transform the way in which it worked, but it also provided it with the flexibility to grow its business and transform its IT - both now and in the future. Moving to an Opex model also meant that the Vita Group could look to spend money that was previously tied up in hardware on manufacturing equipment instead - something that was key for the businesses' success.

Of course, a major change for the Vita Group was a transition to the Cloud. With a strong desire to move to virtualised services the company was prepared for the change, and working with a provider such as Exponential-e who are an expert in Cloud Services further provided them with the support and trust required to make the leap.

With an initial time frame of making the move to Cloud within two months, after just two weeks it became clear that this could be done much quicker and so the changes were made faster than expected. This gave the Vita Group more time to adjust and settle in to the new systems.

 Challenges

With 36 sites across 14 countries a key for the Vita Group was that they were able to work collaboratively across the globe, with secure and reliable Connectivity – something their existing supplier was unable to offer them. They wanted to move to a new WAN which gave them the functionality and collaboration that they required.

Particularly with such a number of sites, the company found that they were simply spending too much time in-house managing suppliers and processes. Being able to offload this to an external body would mean that their IT department could instead focus their efforts on key business requirements, rather than the day to day running of the business.

With several different hardware platforms and vendors, and a distinct lack of proactive support, the Vita Group wanted to streamline processes and so began to look for a supplier that could meet all their requirements whilst providing a single SLA underpinned with proactive customer support.

An interest and desire to move to the Cloud meant that the Vita Group required a supplier that could provide all of these things, plus the ability to transition to virtualised services.

This search led them to discover Exponential-e.

Solution benefits

• Naturally, the Vita Group were looking for a service provider that could meet their requirements in terms of WAN, Cloud and customer support. But alongside this, they were also looking for a partner that they could trust and work alongside for the foreseeable future.
• The Vita Group wanted a partner that understood Cloud and could deliver a reliable Network and service model. Exponential-e were the perfect fit for all of these requirements and further proved this by delivering services over a month ahead of schedule.
  

About JAM Recruitment

About ICA

The International Cotton Association (ICA) is the world's leading international cotton trade association and arbitral body. It carries 170 years of history and a clear mission for the future to protect the legitimate interests of all those involved in the cotton trade.

Established in 1841, the ICA provides a worldwide service for the international sale, purchase and movement of raw cotton between producers, traders and consumers. The majority of the world's raw cotton is traded under ICA Bylaws & Rules and the ICA has more than 500 members, including some of the world's major cotton companies and affiliate industry firms. The organisation operates on a not-for-profit basis.

Solution 

After comparing a number of solution providers rigorously, Exponential-e was selected. Key selection criteria included: technology, customer service, reputation, expertise and price.

Robert Jiang explained: "With the challenges we had faced, we really needed a supplier who could deliver great infrastructure and customer service. The face-to-face meeting with Exponential-e's technical team at its London Network Operations Centre assured us that it was able to deliver the whole package; reliable high-speed Internet connectivity, coupled with great customer service and expertise. And after speaking to a number of other organisations who all recommended Exponential-e's services we were confident that they would be the right choice for us."

Working closely with the ICA, Exponential-e ensured the new Internet connection was deployed timely to coincide with the Association's Liverpool office move.

The Association's new protocol-agnostic connection, delivered over an uncontended 100Mbps fibre-optic connection, easily accommodates for any additional large applications or changes in network bandwidth demand. Since deployment, the ICA has enjoyed a 100% uptime of its Internet connection.

In addition, employees can now easily access emails and company files remotely and backup is effortlessly carried out online. Jiang summarises his experience of Exponential-e: "Unlike some companies where you never speak to the same person and you are passed from one department to another; Exponential-e's approach is very personal, straightforward and proactive. We're always kept up-to-date and that's very reassuring as a customer."

 Challenges

After facing Internet downtime, regular data peaks and with worldwide members relying on the ICA for fast and efficient resolutions to arbitration disputes, the ICA's legacy Internet connectivity was no longer suitable. The Internet downtime resulted in members not being able to to access the ICA website for vital information and the association was unable to communicate with members via email or audio conferencing.

Robert Jiang, Business Operations & Development Manager at the ICA explains: "Our main duty is to provide a good service to our worldwide members. So we have to ensure that we can be contacted at all times. And with strict response timelines for all arbitration cases, it's paramount that all communication is timely – whether that's via email or audio conferencing. With the Internet downtime we experienced, we simply were not able to offer the best quality service to our members. We needed a much more reliable and scalable solution."

Since the association often peaked in its bandwidth usage, even simple administration tasks such as backup proved to be difficult. In addition, accessing the company network remotely was a real challenge for staff. As a result, ICA began sourcing a more reliable solution provider which could offer the infrastructure and customer service levels needed to enable it to provide a better service to its member base.

"A great advantage of Exponential-e's Internet service is that it's Layer 2, which means we can split our connection between multiple services in the future. This will help us to further reduce costs, streamline operations and provide a better service to our members - and this is key for us." - Robert Jiang - Business Operations & Development Manager.

Features 

• Increased bandwidth capacity and performance.
• Reduced overheads with the introduction of audio conferencing over the Internet.
• The ability to converge multiple services over one connection and further reduce costs.