"We chose Timico because the ADSL connection is used as part of the transmission network between the remote site and the studio and as a result we can only afford to go with a top quality network such as that of Timico's.
Timico only deals with business customers and in this market quality is paramount. They operate an uncongested network with no traffic shaping policies which means that we are guaranteed to get the best network performance available. We did not believe that this would be possible with a consumer orientated ISP."
Mark Bodenham
Technology Operations Manager
Virgin Radio
The Stroke Association
Services - Management of data network, including the central pipe and all associated broadband tails. Co-location and disaster/recovery.
The Stroke Association is the only UK-wide charity solely concerned with promoting stroke prevention and education. Its head-office is located in the City of London and it also has a warehouse and resource centre in Northampton. In addition, the charity has staff based at over two hundred other locations across the UK: at NHS premises, regional offices, small satellite offices and homeworkers.As a charity, the Stroke Association is always looking for ways to control its costs. In 2008 it decided to merge its two Northampton-based premises and take advantage of the move into a new building to upgrade its private wide area network (PWAN). A new network topology was needed that would be able to transport various complex IP technologies at a business-strength standard. Key to the upgrade was the ability to run video conferencing, as this would deliver savings through a reduction in ongoing travel costs and other associated costs such as accommodation and out of pocket expenses.
"We wanted a network that would deliver applications such as video conferencing to a high quality, in a timely fashion and also be future proofed. As our old network service provider didn't have the class of service (CoS) or quality of service (QoS) to do this we went shopping for one who did," explains Paul Hughes, Head of Information Technology at The Stroke Association.
"Timico has provided us with a first class PWAN and we are also benefiting from an enhanced Disaster Recovery solution. The extra bandwidth and co-location between the Northampton resource centre and London head-office means that if a fire, flood or burglary occurs at either site, all data is secure as there are off-site copies in both locations. We are looking forward to running video conferencing soon and are now well positioned to exploit Timico's VoIP for Business and fully managed Homeworker Services at an appropriate time in the future," continues Paul Hughes.
The Timico installation at The Stroke Association will be completed over a number of phases. Phase one involved taking over the management of the charity's data network. The network topology is now a hybrid ADSL/MPLS, which enables the existing ADSL tails to be upgraded to ADSL Max Premium and allows the association to start exploiting the new MPLS connections which will be running video conferencing.
"Timico's project management has been like a smooth turnkey solution and they even manage BT for us, a black art in itself! Timico really know their stuff and engender confidence right from the start," praises Paul Hughes. "Everything in Phase 1 has gone smoothly. The day we were switched on I warned everyone to expect the network to be down for the whole day, whilst each ADSL tail was migrated, but everything went live perfectly and we only had two and a half hours downtime! We have seen an immediate twelve-fold increase in bandwidth capacity on the ADSL circuits that have been upgraded and I am already getting good feedback from users.
"Timico's customer service has worked hard to make our bills the way we want them using all our internal billing codes and, best of all, I calculate that we are saving around 20% in costs," concludes Paul Hughes.
