Edmund Nuttall’s New WAN is Award Finalist

Edmund Nuttall’s new WAN has been short listed as a finalist for the Communications in Business Awards 2006 which is to be held September 7th at the Mayfair Marriott. In 2005, Edmund Nuttall commenced an extensive evaluation to replace their existing 10 year old WAN. The new WAN had to be from a single supplier, and offer greater flexibility, greater security and higher bandwidth at each site and be fully managed - without adding too much to the total cost of ownership. Community Internet plc (CI) was selected, and has been working closely with Edmund Nuttall since the award of the contract in November 2005; “All objectives have been met and in certain instances exceeded” stated Steve Shepherd ICT Manager at Edmund Nuttall. Recently Edmund Nuttall has been awarded the contract for the clearance of the London Olympic site and turned to CI to look for communications solutions. As a result, Edmund Nuttall are planning to deploy CI’s wireless communications solution RedKite alongside traditional techniques for themselves and hopefully other contractors on site; “This demonstrates their commitment to working with Edmund Nuttall in providing flexible solutions”.

In June 2005 Edmund Nuttall started the process of finding a new WAN solution. The key requirements were to consolidate to one supplier from the current multiple suppliers to provide better integration, security, resilience, and price performance. For business continuity reasons, Edmund Nuttall wanted to reduce the dependency on the Head Office as being the centre of the network. In addition with the emergence of new technologies, it was clearly going to be possible to get much higher bandwidth at each site to meet the demands of new applications. After an extensive evaluation of suppliers, including a number of Tier 1 companies, Steve Shepherd ICT Manager selected Community Internet plc (CI). Steve commented that “whilst cost was a major consideration, what sold the eventual winner was their ability to be flexible. For example, we signed up for a 3 year contract to obtain volume discount but included the renegotiation of the contract cost annually, and CI permit DSL links for short time periods e.g. 2 months, vital for our business”.

The project implementation started in November 2005 with a plan completion date of December 2006 for migration of the Head Office and the twenty Area Offices. Running parallel with this project was the implementation of data links to all the construction sites, of which there are generally 100 operational at any one time. Leased lines and LES circuits are routed to Telehouse and DSL circuits are routed to Redbus. These two sites have ‘dark fibre’ connectivity therefore providing resilience. Eventually Edmund Nuttall will use the hosting facilities at Telehouse for a number of internal systems such as Exchange.

“Our annual costs have increased but they are in line with what was projected. However, this doesn’t reflect the true situation when comparing cost and performance. Previously an annual cost for a 256K link was £5K, this year a 2MB link costs £8K. A major improvement. The process for provision of new circuits has improved. Today, our Project Management complete one document which is then authorised by IT and forwarded on to CI. IT involvement in the supply is kept to a minimum. Depending on size of project, implementation of supply is done by site personnel using supplied documentation or by IT Technicians” adds Steve on the business rationale for the change in WAN supplier.

In terms of the overall project, Steve states that “all our objectives have been met and in certain instances exceeded. An example of this is remote access, where we have seen a high uptake of this facility by personnel requiring access via their home computer. Also, we are now able to provide secure access to our network for solution providers whom we require to remotely support their solutions. Finally, the provision of data telecommunication is now a simple process which in general is undertaken by Project Management as part of their site mobilization and require little input from IT service. “

Subsequent to start of the WAN project with Community Internet, Edmund Nuttall has been awarded the project for clearance of the London Olympics site. Steve says that “We will be partnering with CI to provide a wireless connectivity for use hopefully by all companies involved with the Olympics development. This demonstrates their commitment to working with Edmund Nuttall in providing flexible solutions”. CI's RedKite wireless solution has been selected alongside traditional technologies as it offers greater flexibility and is less prone to damage due to the hostile nature of demolition sites for the hard wired alternatives.

“We are delighted that our solution for Edmund Nuttall has been selected as a finalist for the 2006 Communications in Business Awards” adds Graham McLean, Managing Director of Community Internet plc “and we look forward to playing our part in the continuing growth and evolution of Edmund Nuttall's business over the coming years.”

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About the award
Edmund Nuttall has been shortlisted for an award in the 'Best WAN project (private sector)’ category.

About RedKite
Community Internet was awarded a licence to operate a point-to-multipoint fixed wireless service in the 5.8 GHz band by OFCOM in November 2004. The RedKite service is now available in Oxford, London and Exeter which are the first of a number of planned cities and towns to receive the RedKite service.

About Community Internet plc
Community Internet is a Business-to-Business Internet Service Provider with an unparalleled reputation for innovation and customer support. Working closely with customers to understand specific requirements, Community Internet builds and supports solutions crafted from an extensive portfolio of connectivity solutions, security products web services and professional services to support a huge variety of on-line and e-business activities. Community Internet enables businesses of all sizes to communicate better with their customers, suppliers, partners, home workers, branch offices, temporary sites and mobile workers – no matter what the circumstances.


For further information please contact:

Joanne Carpenter
Community Internet
Email: joanne.carpenter@community.net.uk