AT Communications

Corporate Communications

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The Challenge
Corporate Communications, a nationwide retail organisation with outlets in almost every high street needed to
update their existing networked point of sale (PoS) and business data system to run over a private national network,
while at the same time keeping their data secure and without incurring the costs of downtime. The end customer
has over 300 sites across the UK and nine remote sites in Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and the
Channel Islands.

The primary concern was the complexity of large scale deployment of CPE appliances required for
network connectivity to a diverse geography with minimum downtime and minimum implementation
costs to the end customer.

The Solution
Working closely with the ISP’s MPLS core engineers, the Virtual Access customer support team
helped to integrate the CPE appliance services with the MPLS network. Together with
Corporate Communications, Virtual Access designed end customer service profiles for Virtual Access
appliances at the edges of the network.
Using Virtual Access’ Zero Touch managed installation process to deploy over 300 networked sites
across the UK meant that no engineer or specialist installer was required on site to install the
CPE appliance technology. This in turn simplified the logistics operation and minimised the costs
of service implementation.

The Benefits
Why Corporate Communications felt the Virtual Access solution was a good fit for this project

‘This being a large retail operation, communication resilience was a pre-requiste for Chip and PIN.
credit card authentication. This required a fixed link with back-up in the event of the primary link failing.
We found that the Virtual Access product was ideal for this as it provided cost-effective use of the ADSL PSTN
circuit for back-up.’
Corporate Communications.

• The product’s capability and ease of deployment across a large estate.
• Zero Touch managed installation service provisioning meant there was no need for
  highly qualified engineers for installation and commisioning, allowing fast and cost-effective roll-out.

Direct benefits to the end customer

• A highly resilient cost-effective network.
• Ease of maintenance and support with Corporate Communications being able to provide remote management.

End customer benefits of the overall solution

• The business benefit is lower cost of deployment support.
• The technical benefit is that it delivers the required solution resilience.

Further business benefits to Corporate Communications

• The major business benefit to Corporate Communications is that they are delivering the required solution
  to their customers, providing remote management and on-going support.

AT Communications SiNET Case Study

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SiNET is ATC Group PLCs’ fully managed, hosted IP telephony system which revolutionises business communications.
It is a one supplier, one product, one bill, complete communications solution for single and multi-site businesses.
SiNET is a simple package that provides all the features and benefits of a state of the art telephone system.
SiNET is targeted at SME customers with a requirement of 5-50 extensions per site and especially multi-sited
businesses and large enterprises with multiple small sites in their estate.

Sites are connected to the ‘SiNET system’ via a broadband connection, providing a single network for voice and data.
A key attribute of the solution is simplicity, to achieve connection a user simply needs to plug the SiNET handset
into the delivered network.

The Challenge
In order to deliver this low touch, high value service the Group selected Virtual Access as a technology partner.
The solution needed to address the following key requirements of the SiNET service:
• Ease of installation and in-service maintenance
• High quality voice services on a shared voice and data network
• A hands-off approach to router service provisioning and configuration management

The Solution
Working closely with the Group’s operations team, the Virtual Access customer engineering team helped to
integrate the Service Managed Gateway CPE appliance technology with the SiNET IP Centrex infrastructure.
The goal being to provide a seamless, scaleable, cost-effective solution.

Virtual Access worked with the Group in the design of the final configurations for the customer premises equipment
routers located at the edges of the network. This required the use of “Clearway” technology developed by
Virtual Access to address the challenges of mixed voice and data networks, ensuring minimised jitter and
therefore highest possible voice quality.

From ATC Group’s point of view, the overheads associated with on site installation visits for setup and
configuration of the routers, could have a serious impact on the profitability of the solution.
The use of the Virtual Access Zero-Touch managed installation process means that no specialist installer is required
on site to install the CPE appliance. This in turn simplifies the logistics operation and reduces the costs of service
implementation.

The Benefits
Why ATC felt the Virtual Access solution was a good fit for this project

• ATC Group chose to use the Virtual Access IP-Touch service delivery model, a service that provides full
  outsource of the configuration management and second- and third-line support of the CPE devices.
• ATC Group’s operations have access to a management portal which enables them to place service requests,
  to perform first-line support tasks and to monitor the status of installed appliances. 24hours per day, 7 days per week.
  
• This service model allows the operations team to focus their efforts on the delivery of telephony and SiNET
  services to their customers.
  
• Virtual Access’ management systems are hosted at a secure, hosting location for Internet-based services.
  Management servers are also located within the core of MPLS/L2TP private networks of a selection of ISPs.
• These options provide ATC Group with a broad range of service environments for SiNET.
• Each Virtual Access Service Managed Gateway appliance locally monitors a broad range of service attributes
  such as diagnostic status, data throughput, voice call quality and WAN utilisation using a number of statistical methods.
• Information is processed and stored locally by the appliance, this removes the need for costly conventional
  monitoring systems. Services are monitored centrally through the Virtual Access secure Monitor portal.
• Because the information is locally pre-processed and stored in battery backed up memory, information
  needs only to be transported across the network for periodic central archival. This eliminates network
  traffic overheads involved in service management, resulting in bandwidth savings, increased scalability and
  depth of SLA monitoring.
• A further business benefit of the Virtual Access proposition for ATC Group is that of the solution’s
  inherent capability to provide network monitoring services. The Monitor Portal, coupled with localised
  information captured by each CPE appliance, offer a ready-made platform for delivery of proactive availability
  monitoring and network utilisation reporting.

Further business benefits to the ATC Group
Mark Sensier, Product and Services Director commented, “In deploying the SiNET solution to our target markets
it was vitally important that we had a partner which we could rely upon to deliver a first class service.
In addition, we wanted our customers’ experience of VoIP to be unblemished and therefore required a device that
could address the quality of service requirements. Further, Virtual Access has delivered on all fronts and have
contributed to the success of the SiNET product suite.”