THE CLIENT – ICT NORTHWEST

ICT Northwest have many national and international clients with systems being supported globally. One of their key strengths is that we are able to deliver and support Voice & Data Solutions throughout the UK.

“Our goal is to provide exceptional service to our new and existing customers and to always offer real world cost effect solutions which deliver on cost and performance.”





THE CHALLENGE

TRANSFORMING THE ICT NORTHWEST BUSINESS MODEL INTO THAT OF A MANAGED SERVICES PROVIDER WHILE HAVING TO MIGRATE ITS INFRASTRUCTURE INTO A LONDON BASED DATACENTRE

As a company, ICT Northwest wanted to build its own cloud infrastructure in order to transform its business model from that of an IT services and network installations company into a true managed services provider offering bespoke hosting solutions to clients.
  

SCALABILITY OF ITS INFRASTRUCTURE

However, the constraint the company had in doing this was that of scalability and being able to accommodate for future customer demand. Although ICT Northwest had some orders for hosted solutions coming through from clients, the company needed to keep a close eye on its cash flow. This was because the investment which it needed to make in purchasing equipment combined with that of deploying its infrastructure within a datacentre was quite sizeable.

In order to progress with the company’s plans to become a managed services provider, the company required a datacentre provider which could work with the team to forecast predicted growth rates and be able to scale its colocation requirements as required.
 



ONE PROVIDER OFFERING BESPOKE DATACENTRE SOLUTIONS

Having evaluated numerous colocation facilities in the north west of England, ICT Northwest found it difficult to find an appropriate datacentre operator which matched its company’s needs. The team found that most of the datacentre providers which they had visited had offered inflexible terms as well as a very costly entry point.

The company needed an agile colocation provider which could offer an array of bespoke datacentre solutions such as remote hands and be able to scale up the services as required once customer demand increased.
 



ACCESS TO THE SENIOR MANAGEMENT TEAM

The team wanted to be able to develop a close business relationship with the provider so that they could get in contact with the senior management and operations team very promptly in order to receive real time updates as to what was happening with their racks and track activity.

THE SOLUTION

FLEXIBLE APPROACH FROM SENIOR MANAGEMENT TEAM AT LDEX

The company had worked with some of the senior management staff at LDeX previously on customer projects, so this meant that some of the team were already familiar with the staff expertise within the company as well as their client–centric approach to business.

Having discussed its’ plans and business aspirations with the senior executives in the company, as well as the problems which it had faced with other datacentre providers, LDeX was able to offer the company an incredibly flexible proposal. LDeX was also able to provide creative ideas and solutions as to how ICT Northwest could launch its new range of services sooner than originally planned.
 



COLOCATING ITS INFRASTRUCTURE IN LONDON

The team at ICT Northwest had not previously considered colocating its infrastructure within a datacentre in the London area. However, having thought about it, the company had realised that it aligned perfectly with their business aspirations as there were enhanced connectivity benefits and remote hands services available. This enabled the safe to feel at ease that the onsite technicians would be able to work on the rack if needed, freeing up time and not having to trek to the datacentre if something needed to be done.

This was a cost effective solution as it saved the team considerably in terms of engineering time and cost, enabling them to concentrate on what they do best while LDeX looked after the back end.
 



EASING THE MIGRATION PROCESS

LDeX put plans in place in order to ensure that the migration process would run as smoothly as possible, ensuring that service could commence as soon as possible. The team at LDeX made it financially viable for the company to use its’ service and created a scalable platform that would allow it to grow as required.
 



CARRIER NEUTRALITY

As a carrier neutral datacentre, LDeX was able to assist the company in sourcing suitable connectivity providers within the datacentre, which subsequently enabled them to scale as their requirements grew.
 



ROBUST, RESILIENT AND SECURE ENVIRONMENT

With a 2.5m fence, perimeter control, mantraps, facial recognition machines as well as a highly robust multi-tiered physical and network security system and staff on hand on a 24x7x365 basis, this provided the company with the highly secure hosting environment which was sought after. The site had also been audited by some of the company’s health service customers and had been approved.

THE RESULTS

The migration of the company’s servers and infrastructure from Manchester to London went extremely well and service began very promptly afterwards.

The company was given the ability to set up its service earlier than planned due to the flexible approach at LDeX. This enabled them to offer the new services out to clients earlier and be able to increase the company’s revenue and profitability at the same time.

The fact that the company moved into LDeX early and set up its network ahead of schedule meant that it was able to provide Bolton Hospice with a hosted desktop solution. If the deal had not of been in place with LDeX, the company would not have been able to deliver this critical service to Bolton Hospice on time.



RECOMMEND

Truly the biggest reasons to work with LDeX as far as we are concerned are that they are flexible in terms of offering bespoke solutions to clients and their customer service – what more can you say!

If you would like further information about how LDeX Group can assist with your colocation requirements, please contact [email protected]

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