In 2010 the council identified the need to upgrade its infrastructure to support improvements to service delivery, and reduce operational costs. An existing partnership of Virgin Media Business and Intercity was selected through competitive tender to provide a solution.
The solution
After a formal review process Intercity presented recommendations in respect to network security. The council invested in resilient platforms to support multiple applications on a single appliance, providing simplified and centralised day to day management of the infrastructure, and therefore lowering operating costs.
Deployed in a High Availability configuration, the platforms supported the council’s existing Check Point and Websense systems to provide a multi-layer security solution on a single platform. Working in close partnership with the council’s IT staff, Intercity completed a seamless migration to the new infrastructure without interruption to services or disruption to staff.
Intercity was engaged on all stages for the project from initial design through deployment to ongoing maintenance, support and management of the new infrastructure. Subsequently, Intercity has been engaged to extend the network security capability to include deployment of Juniper technology, all of which it maintains, monitors and manages on behalf of the council.
The security infrastructure combines elements from a number of leading vendors, and is covered by “Band 1” support SLA which provides 24/7 monitoring, proactive response within 2 hours, target fix within 4 hours.
“Throughout this project Intercity demonstrated a thorough understanding of the Council’s ICT requirements, and worked closely with us to design and implement a solution that has improved performance and reduced our operational costs.”
Lee Edwards, Head of IT, London Borough of Redbridge Council
Benefits
Intercity has been the incumbent provider for network and security services across the council’s infrastructure since 2004. Building on this initial success, it now provides the council with a managed firewall service as well as support and maintenance on its network infrastructure including both wired and wireless solutions across a complex multi-vendor estate.
Next Steps
In 2010 Intercity secured continuous engagement through a multi-year support and management contract, including provision of onsite resource, which was won through competitive tender in partnership with Virgin Media Business, which provides a significant proportion of voice and data services within the borough, including the deployment of a Metro Ethernet wide area network.
Intercity remains flexible in its approach to supporting the council in a true partnership approach, which includes permanent deployment of on-site engineering resource to complement the in-house team.
