Case Studies
Copy. Scan. Print. Connect.
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About Balreed Digitec
Founded in 1977, Balreed Digitec is a national leading provider of copy, print and scan solutions and systems. In addition to this it offers ongoing support and maintenance of devices and the supply of consumables such as paper and toner, not to mention related products and services, from software to office furniture.
Balreed’s continuing expansion, unaffected by the recent economic downturn, has led to the opening of offices in the Midlands and the North, which has meant that employee numbers have grown almost five-fold from 2004 to over 100 employees in March 2010.
The Challenge
Balreed Digitec’s previous wide area network (WAN) connected two of its offices. However, after experiencing limited connectivity in a period of 6 weeks, and finding it extremely difficult to resolve the matter with its incumbent supplier, Balreed decided to review other options.
The key objectives were:
· to provide the best possible connectivity to its clients thereby ensuring the service and support it prides itself on
· to significantly reduce the risk of any downtime
· to develop a close partnership with a supplier who would understand its business and would be available at all times
· to invest in a flexible and scalable solution capable of meeting its recent and projected growth
The brief was to deliver connectivity to all of Balreed Digitec’s offices around the UK, including the provision of secure access to its headquarters in Maidstone. The solution had to be scalable to allow for planned growth in both the number of locations, and the bandwidth required at each office.
Why hSo?
Balreed Digitec was referred to hSo by an independent consultant, who recommended hSo specifically for its quality customer support and robust MPLS network.
hSo’s first steps were to deliver broadband connectivity to the City of London Sales Office and the Maidstone Head Office. The solution utilised a combination of ADSL in London and SDSL in Maidstone together with managed routers and firewalls to provide secure connectivity.
In the words of Steve Spicer, Business Support Manager at Balreed Digitec, “we were impressed by the flexibility hSo demonstrated to deliver these services both rapidly and at short notice, with a minimum of fuss and outstanding support”.
As a result, Balreed Digitec felt comfortable selecting hSo to deliver on its broader requirements for a nationwide network.
The Solution
hSo designed an 8-site solution based on MPLS in the core, significant fibre-based connectivity to the Maidstone Head Office, lower cost broadband connectivity to the other satellite sites and finally a fully-managed firewall layer providing private access to the Head Office and security for each site.
hSo:CONNECT – delivers a versatile high-bandwidth fibre connection, currently running at 10 Mbps, but capable of being rapidly upgraded to 100 Mbps, or even 1Gbps if needed in the future. The hSo:CONNECT ‘tail’ circuit links Balreed Digitec directly to a private MPLS WAN.
hSo:DSL – provides each Balreed Digitec office with always-on, high bandwidth connectivity at an affordable cost, that can also be provisioned and upgraded within a matter of a week or two, or even days in the case of some changes.
hSo:SECURE+ – secures the entire network, with managed firewalls at each remote office, providing a secure IP VPN to a more powerful, centralised firewall in the core of the MPLS network, and thus to the Maidstone Head Office.
Adding a new office is a quick and simple process of delivering a new hSo:DSL service, with an associated hSo:SECURE firewall, and applying the pre-agreed security and IP VPN configuration. An upgrade or configuration change is even simpler, with hSo managing the entire process, including any changes to the firewall infrastructure in place.
The Benefits
Resilience
To provide the levels of support required by its clients (such as troubleshooting or installing a printer remotely over the internet), Balreed Digitec’s offices need to rely on 24/7 high-speed connectivity. The predictability of an “always-on” service provides Balreed’s clients with the assurance that they will always be accessible, and contributes to its image of stability and credibility.
Centralising the firewall infrastructure where possible has increased resilience (power, connectivity and disaster recovery in hSo data centres is inherently more robust than a company comms room), and simplifies the solution, therefore reducing cost and complexity.
Trust
Balreed Digitec believes its success is directly related to the working partnerships it builds with its suppliers, including hSo.
One of the things that Balreed Digitec appreciates most about hSo is that it understands what Balreed is doing, and can be suitably flexible. This provides the peace of mind needed to be able to hand off the responsibility of wide area networking, and focus on in-house changes.
A great solution is nothing without great support and Balreed Digitec has been impressed by its customer experience. The hSo support desk provides a proactive and personalised service, and as well as having relevant information such as network reporting and alarms, individual contacts and network diagrams, at their fingertips, the team are familiar with each customer.
“The hSo support team know who I am and what I’m about. If I report an issue, they take ownership of it – no drama… but often I’m notified that they have detected a problem before we notice it ourselves!” Steve Spicer commented.
Scalability
In the case of its WAN, Balreed’s business moves so quickly that it does not always have the luxury of time on its side when planning and arranging orders for upgrades and new offices.
The use of MPLS in the core, and the scalable design of the network, provides the reassurance that wherever Balreed Digitec decides to expand, hSo will be able to incorporate that new office seamlessly into the existing network.
MPLS also provides a future-proof foundation that could be used to support additional network services such as Voice or Video over IP to facilitate inter-office or customer communication. By incorporating customer offices into the network (securely of course) the network could even be used as an extranet, potentially providing direct access to a customer LAN for servicing and support purposes.
Already in the works, Balreed Digitec is planning to consolidate its Sales, Service and Head Office in Maidstone within the next 4 months. Fortunately, given the complexities of such a project, with hSo’s reliable and scalable network, as well as a trusted working relationship now in place, network connectivity will be the least of Balreed Digitec’s concerns.
