Yorkshire Water is investing heavily in the latest
managed IP communications network to improve the resiliency of its
network, boost IT customer services to 2,500 employees and enable a
more proactive approach to tackling problems when they
arise.
It will begin installing the IP virtual private network in
December in three-week sections, finishing at the end of the first
quarter 2007.
The IP VPN will be managed by service provider ntl:Telewest
Business as part of its £13bn UK-wide infrastructure. It will link
up 130 Yorkshire Water sites and have a bandwidth of between 8Mbps
and 1Gbps.
Yorkshire Water said that, once in place, the IP VPN would
provide a secure, flexible, scalable and fully managed
infrastructure.
James Lockwood, IT infrastructure manager, said that the new
network would replace a wide area network built on a "hub and
spoke" design, which means it has multiple single points of
failure.
Project manager Matthew Rowe said that the project started in
December 2005, when Yorkshire Water put out the tender. Since then,
the firm has been carrying out due diligence and liaising with
senior business representatives across many departments, including
telemetry - which contains the key users of the new IP network -
service management, infrastructure, procurement, legal and office
governance.
Julian Holstead, IT service delivery manager at Yorkshire Water,
said, "The organisation's single biggest business issue was a lack
of IT ability at the 130 sites to run all the IT that the
organisation needs. From the senior management down, they are all
eager for this to work".
Holstead said that from a service point of view, the IP network
would massively reduce calls to the IT service desk because
ntl:Telewest will manage and monitor the service around the
clock.
"It should get us to a position where we will be proactive if
something goes wrong, rather than reactive," he said.
Lockwood added that the managed network will allow Yorkshire
Water's IT team to concentrate on other projects, including working
on a network switch strategy for the 130 sites.
Solving VPN failures