The business information register Companies House issued a tender for a revamped network connecting its main office in Cardiff to four other locations – London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Newport. Not only did the new network have to be resilient, it also needed to be cost-effective to align with the Agency’s efficiency plan. Companies House needed to upgrade its MPLS network, and, as the agency is now using Amazon AWS public cloud to store, access and share data, it needed to add a private Cloud connection; for security, to cut costs and provide a more consistent network experience. The managed network services provider hSo (HighSpeed Office Ltd) was appointed to design and deploy the five site data network for the organisation.
hSo reports that it’s one of the few SMEs to be appointed to the one year old Network Services Framework (RM1045) and has experience delivering and supporting data connectivity services, based on its own MPLS core network. It also provides a connection to Amazon AWS from its data centres.
Chris Evans, Managing Director of hSo said: “Companies House has been a leader in the provision of digital services in the public sector over the past few years. To remain at the forefront and keep up with the vast amount of traffic they receive every day, they needed a provider that could meet all their requirements. Someone who could offer high bandwidth connectivity without compromising on security and cost-effectiveness.”
And Steve Pitt, Head of Procurement at Companies House added: “hSo understood our challenges and have worked with us to implement a robust and resilient dual-carrier Wide Area Network (WAN) solution that can cope with increasing capacity demand whilst ensuring the data is completely secure.”
