Exponential-e and Vysiion are pleased to announce that both our companies are now active on the new Crown Hosting II framework, which went live on the 24^th November.

As with the original framework, Crown Hosting II provides public sector organisations across the UK with access to world-class hosting services that are both cost-effective and environmentally friendly, hosted at the Government's data centres of choice – all of which are accredited to 'Official' as standard.

Having already been present on the original framework since its inception, we have already established a world-class reputation for supporting Crown Hosting customers. This new framework will further enhance our ability to deliver an expanded range of services to public sector organisations, without requiring them to go through a costly and time-consuming procurement process. This includes:

• Migration-as-a-Service. Hands-on support throughout every phase of the migration process, from proof-of-concept to design and delivery, ensuring the process can be completed with zero disruption to critical services.
• Network Connectivity. Secure, highly resilient connections between sites and data centres, with direct Cloud access, WAN and HSCN connectivity available.
• Managed IT Services - Public sector customers can also procure a range of complementary services and solutions such as proactive monitoring and support from our 24/7, UK-based NOC and CSOC via other frameworks, for a holistic, cradle-to-grave support service.
• Governance, Risk, and Compliance. All services are accredited to global standards and delivered by personnel with all the appropriate clearances, to streamline the fulfilment of compliance obligations and allow for more effective risk management.
• 24/7 Onsite Support. Our fully certified, security-cleared specialists are active with the Ark data centres, providing a range of support services, including our Smart Hands solution.

We are also able to deliver these services to commercial organisations who may be required to provide local services to public sector customers within the Crown Hosting data centres. We have data halls adjacent to the Crown Hosting facilities, which offer the same standards of security, resilience, and energy efficiency. These can be procured directly from us.

As with the previous framework, these services will continue to be delivered by our highly experienced engineers and architects, all of whom have earned the full complement of certifications and qualifications required to design and deliver public sector projects and draw on deep technical knowledge of the Crown Hosting data centres.

Contact us today to discuss your hosting requirements in depth and establish how we can best support you.

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Solent NHS Trust – a leading provider of community, mental health, and learning disability services – has approximately 6,000 staff that operate across 120 sites and has an annual income of over £255 million. The Trust's services are provided across a wide geographical area, covering Portsmouth, Southampton, the Isle of Wight, and parts of Hampshire. Services cover sites such as community hospitals and outpatient environments, as well as other community settings, such as health centres, children's centres, and within people's homes.

In 2021, noting the expiry of its current outsourced contract, the Trust made the decision to go out to tender in order to select a new group of technology partners to support a full revamp of their legacy IT infrastructure. Beyond the replacement of outdated hardware, this represented an opportunity for the Trust to develop a new operating model that would not only be fully optimised for the current healthcare landscape, but also offer ample room to scale and evolve in the future.

Following a rigorous tender process – focusing on candidates' technical capabilities and geographical reach, experience with the healthcare sector's singular compliance, governance, data protection challenges, responsiveness, and proactivity when it came to patient needs – Exponential-e were selected to support the delivery of:

Agile IT support, providing service desk and full life cycle end-user device management, freeing end users to focus on patient care

Modern, reliable end user devices (laptops etc.) that support remote working and increase productivity for the Trust's entire workforce

A seamless IT experience, allowing a mobile workforce, operating across all its locations, to move effortlessly between sites and devices, with associated IT service management tool sets

Effective technology change programmes, to ensure staff, end users, and patients enjoy the full range of available benefits

Critical to this new partnership is the close cultural fit between both organisations – something that became readily apparent throughout the tender process. In particular, the Trust's HEART values resonated especially strongly with the team at Exponential-e, who saw a close parallel with their own company culture – something that helped both teams quickly form a strong rapport.

As Afshin Attari, Director of Public Sector & Unified Platforms at Exponential-e, commented:

"It's an exciting period for the healthcare sector as a whole, with the higher adaption of new digital technology and ways of working. There is clear opportunity to make more effective use of data and digital technology by providing staff with better access to digital tools and patient records, and by bringing improvements to the planning and delivery of services, based on the analysis of patient and population data. It's partnerships like the one between Solent and Exponential-e that are keeping this momentum going, ensuring technological innovation is always in the service of patient care."

Andrew Strevens, Chief Executive Officer at Solent NHS Trust, elaborated:

"Exponential-e's experience in healthcare technology made them a strong potential partner, but it was their willingness to understand where we were, where we wanted to be, and – most importantly – their willingness to tackle any associated ICT challenges head-on. It has been exciting to see the level of engagement across every area of this project from teams at both companies, and I look forward to continuing our work together."

Over the course of the next six months, Exponential-e will manage the migration process, ensuring this does not create any disruption to the Trust's day-to-day operations, with dedicated account, service delivery, and operations teams working closely with internal teams and those from across the partner ecosystem to deliver an effective deployment. The teams from Exponential-e will be on-hand throughout this process and beyond, ensuring staff across all sites are properly supported and able to make use of these new tools straight away.

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Partnership will help accelerate cancer diagnosis and improve digital pathology for the NHS

Exponential‐e, the leading specialist in connectivity, cloud and unified communications solutions has today announced it has become the strategic platform provider for The National Pathology Imaging Co‐operative (NPIC). Exponential‐e will support NPIC's development of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve diagnosis and help deliver core technology platforms to support its deployment of digital pathology in the NHS.

NPIC is a unique collaboration between NHS, academia and industry partners and a world‐leading centre for applying AI research to the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases NPIC will deploy digital pathology scanners in a network of over 30 NHS hospitals across England, including fully digitising the pathology labs in 15 hospitals across the North of England. These scanners will support the implementation of digital pathology, enabling pathologist to make diagnoses using the images and develop artificial intelligence tools to assist them. The programme will generate more than 2.4 million images per year, which equates to at least 3 petabytes of data.

NPIC required a market‐leading digital partner to help design, implement, host and manage the centralised service to store the images in high performance systems and ensure a highly responsive user experience for NHS front‐line workers. The public sector procurement governed the selection process led by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. This concluded with Exponential‐e being selected as the chosen delivery partner.

Exponential‐e now provides NPIC with a platform for its centralised picture archiving and communication system (PACS) to sit on. This system will process and store the images in the Dell EMC PowerScale in tandem with the Dell EMC ECS Enterprise Object Storage, enabling them to be retrieved rapidly and shared digitally with doctors and labs, with speed. As part of information lifecycle management the Exponential‐e platform will automatically manage files according to retention periods moving them down to a lower tier of data storage for long‐term retention and to help control the cost of data growth for the programme.

The platform, which will be fully managed by Exponential‐e across two 3‐ tier data centres, and will additionally provide high speed connectivity to hospitals that are partners on the NPIC programme.

Bash Hussain, Deployment Director at NPIC says: "We have achieved a key milestone for the NPIC programme which has significant infrastructure needs for storage and processing of clinical images. Working alongside Exponential‐e will provide the programme with a resilient, scalable platform needed to meet both our clinical and research ambitions."

Jonathan Bridges, Chief Innovation Officer at Exponential‐e adds: "The work that NPIC is doing to improve patient diagnosis with AI and digital pathology is truly revolutionary and we are thrilled to be a part of its ground‐breaking work. Being a chosen partner of this project further validates the deep expertise that Exponential‐e has in the healthcare and life sciences sectors, and we are very much looking forward to seeing what NPIC can achieve over the coming years with our expert, digital support."

As the service evolves, AI platforms will be layered on top of the Exponential‐e platform. This will enable better customer centricity and accelerated patient diagnosis through increased automation. Enabling large scale image comparison, it will also support research and advanced diagnosis and deep learning‐based pattern recognition. Whilst the ability to gather further clinical, radiologic and genomic data will help to accurately diagnose diseases.

Charles Wilce, Sr. Dir. EMEA Sales for Unstructured Data Solutions at Dell Technologies comments: "The combination of Dell EMC PowerScale and Dell EMC ECS object storage with Exponential‐e technology will deliver AI‐driven insight for NPIC to improve both the quality and outcomes of patient treatment. By harnessing this data in the most meaningful ways, we're able to help our customers drive human progress through data insights and technology innovation."

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Exponential-e are pleased to announce that we are one of the forty-six winners at the 2021 Princess Royal Training, which acknowledge excellence in training and development across the UK. This represents Exponential-e's fifth PRTA award in three years - a huge achievement for our Learning & Development team.

Exponential-e's 2021 award pays tribute to the intensive training employees were provided with in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing them with the skills they needed to respond to customers' rapid move towards hybrid working throughout forty-three clinics, which were attended by 841 team members in total.

Training is a fundamental part of life at Exponential-e, helping our team members achieve their full potential. We extend our congratulations to the Learning & Development team, who have worked tirelessly to ensure the standard of training we offer continues to evolve, year after year.

Find out more about a career at Exponential-e

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Exponential-e are pleased to announce that we have just been awarded the CCA Global Standard - a globally-recognised accreditation that acknowledges excellence in organisations' customer service strategies. The CCA assessment process looks closely at a number of areas, including managing the transition to new working models, agent wellbeing, monitoring and analytics, and the overall customer journey. Its long-term goal is to raise standards of customer service across all sectors.

Earning this accreditation is a testament to Exponential-e's commitment to developing robust processes, motivated and well-supported teams, and an exceptional customer experience. We thank everyone involved in the assessment process!

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Crown Commercial Services are shortly to launch the RM6100 Technology Services framework agreement in July 2021, and Exponential-e Ltd are delighted to announce that they have been named as a supplier on Crown Commercial Service's Technology Services 3 framework.

The breadth of services on offer by the overall Exponential-e Group extends across all Lots on this framework, which will enable us to engage with Public Sector organisations in support of the full range of transformational service requirements. RM6100 TS3 is expected to run for 4 years, until Summer 2025.

Exponential-e are able to supply service offerings to organisations, either by Direct Award (via Service Offers advertised on eMarketplace), or through a Further Competition process, across any of the following Lots:

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