Phoenix IT Group: rebirth of a network

With an IT infrastructure spread across several networks and providers, and clients all across the UK, it was time for some reorganisation.

Like many successful businesses, Phoenix IT Group found itself expanding with offices and clients spread across the country. As acquisitions led to more and more growth, the company inherited a patchwork of networks run by separate providers. Maintaining this became time consuming, costly and tricky to keep on top of.

As an IT company offering outsourcing, consultancy, disaster recovery and business continuity, Phoenix IT Group needed both network reliability and resilience. It needed to simplify its infrastructure with a single high performance network to link all the offices together.

End-to-end service from a single company was what it really wanted. Not another product from one company and a service from another. ICM, one of the Group’s acquired companies, recommended us on the strength of previous work we had carried out together. This, combined with our UK-wide reach convinced the Group to choose us. The National Ethernet connections we went on to install have solved the issue. Employees now work more efficiently, processes are smarter and the company’s clients are enjoying much improved service.

Our locally-based team worked closely with the Group to ensure the solution we proposed met all of its requirements. For instance, it was absolutely vital that the Group could offer its clients the highest possible performance standards. So between us we wrote and agreed a custom-made Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Then there was the issue of managing the network. Understandably for an IT company who market themselves on their flexibility and responsiveness, the Group wanted to have complete control over this. Again, that’s what we delivered. In-house staff control the National Ethernet connections we installed – so the company can respond immediately to customer requests.

The upgrade was phased in, initially joining up four core sites, soon followed by 12 other offices. And because our network is a Next Generation Network, it comes with masses of bandwidth. Each site has a minimum 1Gbit/s bearer so bandwidth can be increased further when required – a great insurance against any future business changes.

The new network is leading to improved efficiency at the Group’s offices. There is a project to consolidate all email and active directory systems. This will allow staff to access services from any of the Group’s offices. And there’s a bonus too – cost savings with the number of servers required tumbling from 12 to four.

Customers can now use the Group’s network to access services hosted for them like databases and applications. For instance, a company can link to one of the Group’s data centres via whichever Group office is nearest to them. This results in dramatically reduced costs for that customer.

Group-wide communications have improved too. Staff can now access databases and applications stored at different offices. This has put them in a position to offer better levels of customer service.

Then there’s the IP-based applications that can now run over our Next Generation Network. Video conferencing is helping to cut down on travel between offices, while IP Telephony has drastically reduced phone costs.

All this, along with our network’s scope means that as the Group continues to grow, it will not lose control of its IT infrastructure.

“The ability to work with us has provided seamless project management and implementation.

Single contact fault diagnosis has increased our efficiency in delivering a first-class solution in our group of businesses,” says Neil Harrison, Infrastructure Manager (Networks & Communication) at Phoenix IT Group.