Case Studies
Carmarthenshire County Council
"I have been impressed with the way Pervasive take ownership of issues and try to exceed my expectations"
Carmarthenshire CC Business Analyst
About Carmarthenshire County Council
Carmarthenshire County Council is a high performing Unitary Authority, which aims to provide high quality services and make Carmarthenshire a better place in which to live, work and enjoy your leisure time. The Council is one of the largest and most diverse employers in South West Wales, employing over 9000 employees who provide services across a rural county to a population of around 170,000 including 15 Secondary schools and Primary schools.
The Business Challenge
Carmarthenshire County Council partnered with the Welsh Assembly to equip all schools and libraries in the county with broadband connectivity allowing Internet access and bandwidth for further development. The requirement specified the solution must have a minimum of 2Mbps of symmetrical connectivity to primary schools and a bandwidth of 10 Mbps for secondary schools. The biggest challenge was to provide internet services in areas, classified by other carriers, as not viable for connection due to their remote location.
The Solution
Due to the challenges provided by the local geography, Pervasive Networks designed and installed a bespoke wireless Wide Area Network backbone infrastructure using a number of strategic hill top sites. These sites together with a number of existing county Points of Presence enabled the deployment of point-to-point and point-to-multi-point unlicensed and licensed microwave wireless links into the local schools. Pervasive Networks also provide 24x7 helpdesk, remote diagnostics and break fix maintenance.
Why Pervasive Networks
Mark Howard, Carmarthenshire CC Business Analyst says that the team at Pervasive act in concert with our internal IT team. They have been innovative in designing and deploying the solution and we can rely on them take proactive ownership of incidents when they occur. I have been impressed with Pervasive Networks from the outset and they have exceeded on my expectations.
Want to know more? Contact Pervasive today.
Godalming College
"Through their dynamic approach Pervasive have become an extension of our IT Team. They assist us by
ensuring business continuity of our network and the service provided by their 24x7 managed service."
Director of Services
About Godalming College
As one of the top education and training providers in Surrey, Godalming College provides many opportunities to gain qualifications and skills for the future. The Tuesley Lane campus offers a wide choice of full time courses for 16 to 19 year olds - around 1650 students with 200 teaching and support staff. The college has exceptional teaching standards and student guidance with modern facilities that provide the ideal stepping-stone to Higher Education or employment. For adult learners, the College's Business Training Services based at Borough Road, Godalming delivers work-based vocational qualifications and skills development programmes to individuals and employers.
The Business Challenges
Before engaging with Pervasive Networks, the college was exposed to the risk of an extensive wired and wireless network without the internal skills or tools to ensure availability, resilience and security. This resulted in great concern over network access, which could significantly affect students wanting to study and teachers accessing student’s course work. Previously all support and management of the network was executed internally. As the management of the network was executed internally due to constraints the approach was more reactive as opposed to proactive and with a small ILT team the college also faced issues of sustainability of knowledge and competence during times of staff turnover. In order to maintain effective support to students and staff, the college needed to expand and strengthen network skills and resources to ensure meeting new demands set by the students and teachers, especially considering the new virtual learning environment. Service continuity was also important as was ensuring that College staff is fully equipped with the appropriate knowledge and understanding.
The Solution
Pervasive Networks provided Godalming College with a comprehensive managed support package. The College now has the reassurance of support on a 24 x 7 basis together with enhanced support at key times such as enrolment and A-level results days or where a new hardware or software solution is being implemented. Of particular benefit to the college is the remote pro-active management of the infrastructure. Pervasive Networks continually assesses real time performance and alert the College of any issues effecting students or resulting in a degradation of overall infrastructure performance. Pervasive has also helped with the management of issues relating to accessing information securely, preventing access to inappropriate web sites and file sharing.
Why Pervasive Networks
Joseph Yeadon comments; “Today, as student’s demands increase we need to offer the flexibility of personal learning optimising their studying time by being able to access their area of the network anytime, anywhere. We approached three suppliers, however we chose Pervasive Networks due to their tailored approach that gives us the opportunity to apply resources to the areas of greatest need. These needs may change over time and with the Pervasive solution we have the opportunity for flexibility. Pervasive Network had some understanding of our organisation through previous work and they listened to our needs in detail before making suggestions and solutions. Our students can now access their work on campus or from anywhere outside in a safely and reliable manor increasing their productivity and effectiveness of study facilities. In summary the partnership formed with Pervasive has assisted Godalming College in maintaining its status as a leading education facility.”
Want to know more? Contact Pervasive today.
King's School
"I was impressed with Pervasive right from the start as they seemed the most professional supplier from day one,
and advised us on additional technology".
IT Services Manager
About Kings School
The King’s School, Canterbury is an independent, co-educational secondary school. With nearly 800 pupils over 600 are boarders. Over the many years of its history, King’s has aimed to bring out the very best in its pupils, equipping them with the skills, technology and knowledge to be effective in the world, giving them a secure basis for choosing how to use their talents and the confidence to be responsive to new challenges.
The Business Challenges
The Kings College had virtually no control over personal laptops in the boarding houses, as they were outside of the college domain. This meant that the students had unlimited access to the internet with film and music sharing between houses. This resulted in bandwidth (and legal) issues that needed urgently addressing. The College was also unable to block the bullying notices that had become an inherent part of the ITunes Redux program. All this resulted in the need to upgrade the IT Infrastructure.
The Solution
With the help of Pervasive, the college upgraded their network, implementing each boarding house on its own VLAN and with this introduced source port filtering. This effectively put an end to inter-house and intra house file sharing removing both bandwidth and legal issues, allowing pupils to only gain access to the college servers, for internet, e-mail and work area retrieval. The network has also been upgraded in design of a future proof and scalable network.
Why Pervasive
Robin Falcon explained; “I was impressed with Pervasive Networks right from the start as they seemed the most professional supplier from day one. They really listened to our problems, took on board our comments and advised us on additional technology. I felt I could trust them to see the project through to the end and had the reassurance to have skilled people with the technical expertise to sort out any problems should they occur. They were a good team to work with and their technical ability and professionalism was clear from the start. I have already recommended them to several other organizations and will continue to do so”.
Want to know more? Contact Pervasive today.
Miller Insurance
"Right from the start Pervasive demonstrated their skills & industry experience. They produced a network design
that met our requirements, rather than providing a standard boilerplate design".
IT Systems Tech Architect
About Miller Insurance Services
Founded in 1902, Miller Insurance Services Limited is an independent specialist insurance and reinsurance broker, operating internationally and at Lloyd’s. The business handled is a mix of reinsurance, complex large commercial business plus programmes and facilities. Dedicated to providing the highest level of service in everything they do, from advising on, broking and placing risks, to technical wordings and claims handling.
The Business Challenges
The inherent network infrastructure technology had many components going end of life, and the manufacturer was not able to guarantee spares, engineering skills or software fixes. This represented an unacceptable element of risk to the business, as the network is business critical, being able to access risk documents 24 x 7 x 365 is paramount to the business. The main objective was to remove this risk whilst increasing performance and improving the flexibility of the network.
The Solution
Pervasive Networks have designed and deployed a fully resilient, scalable and high performance layer 3, 10 Gigabit, core network, with Layer 2/3, 10/100/1000, with power over Ethernet (PoE), network connectivity to every desktop. The solution is supported by a 24x7 Pervasive managed network service.
Why Pervasive Networks
“Right from the start, Pervasive demonstrated their skills and industry experience. They produced a network design that met our requirements, rather than providing a standard boilerplate design. Previously we were concerned that we would not be given the required focus from larger manufacturers. However, since dealing with Pervasive Networks and HP ProCurve we have experienced a true tripartite relationship. They also manage our network and provide a remote monitoring service of our new infrastructure, coupled with an on-site break fix engineering contract. Irrelevant of the priority of our support calls they are all resolved within a couple of hours”.
Want to know more? Contact Pervasive today.
Rotherham NHS
"Pervasive have a good reputation, they have a consistency of staff who always meet their promises".
Network Services Manager
About Rotherham General Hospital Foundation NHS Trust
Rotherham General Hospital is a modern progressive hospital, situated two miles south of the town centre. The first phase of the development opened in 1978, phase two in 1984 and two major capital scheme’s, forming phase three, we completed in 1994. The Trust has an excellent reputation for clinical excellence and efficiency. Following the introduction of the star rating system for Trusts by the Health Care Commission, Rotherham General Hospital has consistently achieved the maximum three stars – the highest level any Trust can achieve. The Trust provides a comprehensive range of Acute Services located on one site and is a major provider of high quality healthcare in South Yorkshire and to the local population of 252,000. There are approximately 700 inpatient beds.
The Business Challenge
On the 1st January 2007, Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust re-established its own internal IT Services Department. For the preceding 3 years, Rotherham PCT managed the Trust’s IT Services on a contract basis. As part of the process of Service in-sourcing, a wide ranging review of the IT Service was conducted by the Trust. The review highlighted that the then IT Network Infrastructure was a major weakness and needed to be addressed urgently if the Trust was to deliver on its vision which was the provision of patient-centric high quality health care. The new IT Network Infrastructure needed to provide the Trust with a high performance converged wired & wireless solution that could seamlessly support the Trust’s key applications such as EPR and PACS and emerging technologies such as RFID.
The Solution
Following a very comprehensive tendering process, Pervasive Networks was awarded the supply, design, implementation and 5 year support of a highly secure, high performance, resilient and scalable, converged fixed and wireless network solution, including unified threat management and the implementation a new single Mode Fibre backbone and the provision of around 3,000 Cat 5e points across the campus.
Why Pervasive Networks
David Brown commented; “Pervasive Networks demonstrated to the Trust a clear understanding of our business and technical requirements to enable us to partner with them to deliver a very complex multi threaded network infrastructure project to meet our vision for an IT enabled change program that is focused on transformation and innovation. We were impressed from the outset with their strong PRINCE II based project management methodology and they gave us a strong feeling that they could deliver this challenging project on time and to budget. We now have a very strong working partnership with Pervasive Networks and would recommend them to other NHS Trusts who are or are thinking about embarking on similar projects.”
Want to know more? Contact Pervasive today.
University of Manchester
"Pervasive is proving to be a strategic partner and we look forward to delivering the benefits of our
wireless strategy with them."
Network Manager
About The University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is the UK’s largest single-site university, with a proud history of achievement and an ambitious agenda for the future. It depends heavily upon IT infrastructure to support its 35,000 students, 11,400 faculty and staff, and world-class research, innovation, and learning initiatives.
The Business Challenge
To address wireless usage that outstripped the capability of its legacy Cisco ‘Fat’ AP network, meet demanding future video and virtual learning needs, and to provide pervasive coverage that may ultimately require in excess of 4,000 access points. The university conducted an extensive technical review of single, multi-channel, and adaptive wireless LANs providers.
The Solution
Pervasive Networks, a specialist leader in wireless LANs and secure mobility solutions, and Platinum partner to Aruba Networks, has been selected by The University of Manchester to upgrade its campus wireless network with a high-speed Aruba Networks 802.11n solution. Pervasive Networks and Aruba Networks was selected after the university determined that the Aruba Networks wireless LAN solution was more scalable, Aruba Networks Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) was easier to deploy, and overall the network was more easily managed than competing systems. The network will be supplied, designed, implemented and supported by Pervasive Networks, an Aruba Networks Platinum Partner and the Aruba Networks Partner of the Year 2009.
Why Pervasive Networks
“We looked for a solution that could scale to deliver a pervasive wireless network on campus, yet would be cost effective and both easy to deploy and easy to manage,” said Darren Hankinson of The University of Manchester’s IT Services. “Aruba won on all points: its ARM technology makes deployment simple and automates a lot of the management; it’s easy to build and manage all the different user communities we need to support; and the scalability of the solution is exemplary. Pervasive Networks tender response was the most successful and they stood out as a partner who we could trust and work well with to deliver this project on time and to budget”
Want to know more? Contact Pervasive today.
