MDNX’s unique carrier integration model delivers significant savings for our customers whilst Life Time Management makes sure you track market prices and enjoy cost reductions in line with "street" price. Add unhindered access to technical people when you need it and you have an insight into the MDNX difference.
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Telephone: +44 (0) 800 107 7000
Email: enquiries@mdnx.com
Website: www.mdnx.com
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Case Studies
BAM Nuttall, (formerly Edmund Nuttall)
VPN delivers connectivity and performance to civil engineersBAM Nuttall, (formerly Edmund Nuttall) a leading UK civil engineering company, identified a requirement to replace its aging IP Clear network with a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The company wanted to move to a single supplier able to provide and manage leased lines, LES and DSL circuits. This supplier also needed to be able to adapt to their rapidly changing network environment and have experience in technology that would assist in the mobilisation of new construction projects.
A Wide Area Network (WAN) is vital to the smooth running of BAM Nuttall’s complex and diverse operations. Their old system, which served the Camberley head office, other regional offices and a number of construction sites with 256Kbps links, was struggling to meet demand. With this in mind, BAM Nuttall identified the need for a fully managed WAN which could keep pace with their rapidly changing requirements for security, connectivity and data transfer.
Requirements were identified for:
• Additional network capacity to cope with the increased frequency and size of data exchange
• Ability for new remote users and sites to access central resources via the network.
• Industry-standard encryption to provide additional security for data transmitted between remote locations.
• Improvement of cost/performance ratio as costs of higher speed links were not proportional to 256K links
• Outsourcing of network management to reduce costs and free up support staff time.
BAM Nuttall invited six suppliers to tender and selected MDNX to provide the services. “We needed a supplier to propose an innovative solution and to be able to demonstrate a proactive support and supply function,” explains BAM Nuttall’s ICT Manager Steve Shepherd.Without VPN a considerable amount ofreconfiguration, installation of new fibrebased connections and additional testing would have been required - incurring extra cost, time and risk.“We selected MDNX for this key project because their focus on delivering business solutions means they quickly understood our requirements and proposed a flexible solution which met all our needs,” states Shepherd. “We agreed on a phased implementation and I have been really impressed by their approach and am pleased with the very limited disruption to our day to day operations,” he adds.
Resilient Connectivity
The secure VPN solution provides increased bandwidth to each location. At the head office, which provides most Information Systems,connectivity is provided via a 100MbpsEthernet circuit with 30Mbps of committed bandwidth and a 2Mbps SDSL backup. A minimum of 2Mbps is provided to all 16 regional offices with ADSL or ISDN providing resiliency in case of failure. At construction sites SDSL or ADSL connections are implemented. The fully meshed VPN design means that remote sites are capable of direct communication.
Security is maintained by segmenting each site from the Internet using a private addressing scheme and is further enhanced through a Stonegate firewall/VPN device which introduces government standard encryption for data transmitted between locations. By using Stonegate’s active-active load balancing MDNX can provide seamless connectivity in the event of a circuit becoming unavailable. By co-locating a content filtering solution at MDNX’s London-based site, bandwidth at the head office can be freed up for other requirements.
Access from anywhere
MDNX’s recommended global roaming solution, iPass, combined with IPSec VPN for static locations and SSL VPN security for flexible, remote access enable the workforce to exchange information, access email, or download files from the corporate network wherever they are.Without VPN, this major change would have required a considerable amount of reconfiguration, installation of new fibre-based connections and additional testing by BAM Nuttall staff - incurring significant cost, time and risk. The decision to use MDNX to upgrade to the new VPN service was based on the need to reduce total cost of ownership, a desire for greater flexibility to support future expansion and a requirement to implement encryption for improved security.“Our experience of delivering bespoke solutions, tailored for business has enabled us to design a WAN that fully meets BAM Nuttall’s expectations. This moves MDNX up a division in the level of the 'fully managed service' wecan offer to our customers,” says Mark Thompson, CEO of MDNX. “We are now working with several other civil engineering companies that have comparable requirements for fast data transfer, high security and remote access.”“Provision of data telecommunication is now a simple process, which is in general handled by our Project Management Team as part of their site mobilisation work with little need for input from IT Services,” says Shepherd. “A further example of MDNX’s flexibility is their ability to offer us customised billing which means that we can easily pass the costs of these services directly on to specific sites or clients”.
Global roaming for business travellers, IPSec VPN for static locations and SSL VPN security for flexible, remote access enables the entire workforce to exchange information, access email, or download files from the corporate network wherever they are. “We selected MDNX for this key project because their focus on delivering business solutions means they quickly understood our requirements and proposed a flexible solution which met, and in certain instances exceeded, all our needs.” Steve Shepherd, ICT Manager, BAM Nuttall.
Genisys Group
MDNXThe Genisys Group of companies, founded by Ashok J Rabheru in 1985, with headquarters in the UK and offices in the USA and India has annual revenues in excess of $60M. The individual skills of each of the specialist companies combine to provide all customers of the Genisys Group with high value cost effective services and solutions.
Genisys Enterprise is a major supplier of creative IT solutions and services to the corporate market place. Made up of Genisys, eGenisys, Genisys Software, Talent Village, Genisys Enterprise, SD Genisys and the USbased Genisys Software Inc. It has offices in Basingstoke, London, Bangalore and New York and has approximately six hundred employees across the four offices.
Genisys Enterprise has established alliances with industry leaders like IBM, HP, Cisco, Toshiba, Novell, Sun and Citrix that allow them to rapidly create and deploy solutions that integrate seamlessly with their customers’ existing computing environments. The Challenge Genisys enjoys an annual growth rate of around 30% and consequently its IT infrastructure needs are constantly developing. Although Genisys had never had any reliability related problems with its previous service, the limited bandwidth was restricting business growth as it could not provide sufficient performance to support the growing number of Citrix users on the network. Up until January 2005, it had been using a 2Mbps leased line to handle its WAN requirements, when a business technology review recommended that it needed at least 5Mbps to handle its requirements efficiently. There was also a view that the contract for a 2Mbps leased line between the London and Basingstoke offices and a 768kbps internet connection had become uncompetitive when benchmarked against new service offerings. “We were starting to see productivity and business efficiency reaching a bottleneck because of our network limitations,” said Paul Stone, Group IT Director, Genisys. “There were things that we wanted to do that we just couldn’t manage with our current arrangements. The bandwidth was the main issue, but we were also using a tape library as our primary method of storage when we wanted to be able to back-up our business critical data from the Basingstoke headquarters using real-time replication at the London office. Unfortunately, given our current arrangements, this was out of the question.” It was also imperative that the new network was reliable. eGenisys hosts a number of customer websites so it is critical that service providers offer minimal downtime.
At A Glance:
Company • Genisys Group
Industry • IT Services
MDNX Solution • Ethernet point-to-point, 2Mbps DSL internet connection, 2Mbps Leased Line internet connection
Key Benefits • 7 x the bandwidth for less money • Elimination of bandwidth bottleneck enabled the business to grow as users could be added • Real-time data replication with tape back-up between sites ensures business continuity
“It makes good business sense to have all of our network and access packages supplied by a single provider, especially one as responsive and consistent as MDNX” Paul Stone, Group IT Director
The Solution
Genisys looked at four different providers for its new network and eventually decided on MDNX’s point-to-point Ethernet service. Genisys had been using a 768kbps internet connection and 2Mbps between the London and Basingstoke offices. MDNX provided a 10Mbps Ethernet connection between the offices, a 2Mbps DSL internet connection for the London office and a 2Mbps Leased Line internet connection for the Basingstoke office. “MDNX offered precise customisation of the service we chose – no other provider we looked at would have allowed us to manage and stay in control of our own network, whereas MDNX were happy to supply the solution ‘wires only’ and let us handle the rest,” Stone continued. “They’ve also saved us a substantial amount of money – we’ve implemented the new solution for just under the amount that we were paying for our previous network.”
The Results
The business now runs more smoothly with the London office, primarily made up of Citrix users, able to overcome restrictive bandwidth limitations, support more clients and run demanding applications such as Shockwave. General business productivity and efficiency has increased, and Genisys continue to enjoy reliably robust uptime. Genisys also uses Microsoft Sharepoint to collaborate on and track projects between the two UK offices, and the MDNX Ethernet solution has improved both the reliability and responsiveness of the application.
The legacy network cost around £40,000 – MDNX’s solution provided considerably more bandwidth than that for less money. The cost saving will be spent on advancing and improving IT infrastructure, rather than on outof-date technology.
“The benefits of gaining a connection between the offices with seven times the bandwidth of the original, for a little under the price of the original, speak for themselves,” commented Stone. They have also been able to achieve real-time data replication between the Basingstoke headquarters and the London office, as well as using tapes as an extra layer of storage security, ensuring business continuity. “It makes good business sense to have all of our network and access packages supplied by a single provider, especially one as responsive and consistent as MDNX,” continued Stone. “We have every confidence in them and look forward to working with them in the future.”
