Network optimisation as the first step towards cloud

Fordway works with leading public, private and third sector organisations to deliver and support changes to business-critical infrastructure.

We help you develop an agile, high-performance and flexible ICT infrastructure that will reduce costs, increase efficiency, mitigate risk and help you maintain a competitive edge. We do this by understanding your business objectives and matching them against best practice processes, technologies and service. We then work alongside your IT team to implement the changes needed, transferring skills to your staff during the project.

We’re technology independent, always looking for innovative products that will deliver genuine business benefits. We work with market leaders and newcomers alike, choosing the combination of products and services that’s right for each organisation and reusing its existing products and licences as much as possible to reduce costs.

What makes Fordway different?
Our customers tell us that they choose Fordway because we offer a unique combination of in-depth technical skill and practical implementation experience. We have a breadth and depth of knowledge which is rare in an organisation of our size. When you chose Fordway, you get a mature, experienced team who work seamlessly alongside your own staff to deliver the project on time and on budget.

Even more importantly, we care passionately about what we do. Every customer really matters to us. Our priority is to ensure your infrastructure change is implemented effectively, and we’ll always go the extra mile to ensure we deliver on our promises.

You’ll also find that we’re not afraid to ask difficult questions and challenge accepted thinking.You can rely on Fordway to challenge you at every stage of a project. We want to design and deliver the best solution for your business needs. To do that, we’ll leave no stone unturned – which means asking questions and debating potential solutions with you until we’re confident that you’re getting the best possible result.

With Fordway, you won’t get hype, or waffle, or the latest technology just because someone thinks it’s a good idea. You’ll get a pragmatic approach, a thorough analysis of your business needs and your existing infrastructure and a solution that delivers exactly what you expect.

Challenging conventional thinking
You can rely on Fordway to challenge you at every stage of a project. We aim to design and deliver the best solution for your business needs. To do that, we’ll leave no stone unturned – which means asking difficult questions and debating potential solutions with you until we’re confident that you’re getting the best possible result.

With us, you won’t get hype, or waffle, or the latest technology just because someone thinks it’s a good idea. You’ll get a pragmatic approach, a thorough analysis of your business needs and your existing infrastructure and a solution that delivers exactly what you expect.

Our history
Fordway was established in 1990 by managing director Richard Blanford. He saw a gap in the market for an IT integrator which used mature, experienced staff to tackle the root cause of infrastructure problems, rather than just treating the symptoms with new hardware and software.

More than 20years later, Fordway has grown to a company of xx people with a track record of delivering effective infrastructure solutions to leading organisations.

Cloud migration
Cloud is currently one of the hottest topics in IT. It has the potential to provide significant benefits, including:
• Almost limitless capacity on demand
• Location independence
• Application flexibility
• Increased efficiency
• Cost savings

Fordway believes that, underneath the cloud computing hype, there are some extremely useful concepts that organisations can implement quickly and easily to improve services. Many organisations will find that they are already using some aspects of cloud computing!

The journey to cloud
We recommend moving to cloud computing in a series of stages. Think of it as a journey, not a single process.

The first step is to re-architect your infrastructure as a private cloud serving your user community. This means reducing complexity and optimising the infrastructure using virtualisation and other cloud technologies – improving operational performance and providing significant cost savings.

Our benchmarking studies show that optimising infrastructure can save an organisation in excess of 25% of its annual IT infrastructure budget.

Specific, low risk elements can then be migrated to publicly available services – creating a ‘hybrid cloud’. You will still have and run your own infrastructure, or have a trusted third party running it for you.

Once your organisation is familiar and comfortable with cloud concepts and practices, you can consider moving more services to public cloud. What you decide to move will depend on the nature or your business.

Fordway has assisted a number of organisations on this journey, and can advise you on the key steps to implement a private or hybrid cloud. We would be happy to provide you with an initial consultation free of charge to help you evaluate your options. Further information is available in our White Paper.