Construction firm The John Doyle Group is putting its IT into a
single infrastructure to support business growth.
The company expects to grow 10% a year for the next five
years.
The group's four construction-related divisions all had their
own IT operations and policies with little integration as a result
of the company's growth through acquisition.
"The key drivers are scalability, future proofing, and improved
efficiency," said Rob Johnson, group chief executive at the
company.
The company has outsourced its network management to Easynet to
create an
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) wide area network to link
all its permanent and temporary sites.
"We needed someone who could put that all together and maintain
the links into it because it was beyond the capacity of our
internal IT staff," said Johnson.
Easynet will also host the company's servers in a single, high
security off-site environment to provide business continuity,
disaster recovery and back-up services.
Both the network and server infrastructure that will use
virtualisation to extend capacity, have been designed to meet
growth estimates for at least five years.
Johnson said although operational costs will increase, the
company expects payback within the five years through improved
efficiency and increased productivity.
The migration to the MPLS network, integration of company
applications and testing is due for completion by the end of the
year.
"If we had merely upgraded our old systems, we would have been
unprepared for growth and unable to use new technology to do all
sorts of exciting things in future," said Johnson.