Data Networking and Security
Customer Profile
Alliance Disposables is one of the leading suppliers of non-food catering equipment in the UK. Their headquarters are based in Cheshire with 11 branch sites across the UK and Ireland. Greystone has been Alliance’s IT partner for over 12 years and has been instrumental in managing and supporting the rapid expansion of all aspects of their IT systems.
Business Issue
Alliance’s offices previously used several different broadband technologies for their internet connections, depending on local availability and cost constraints. However, as the company grew some of these connections became insufficient to meet future demands for data usage and overall reliability.
IT Solution
Greystone, with one of its local ISP partners, implemented a plan to improve the company’s WAN that connects branch sites to the headquarters. Using a fully meshed network of dedicated leased line links with secondary backup links for massively improved speed and reliability.
By using advanced firewall technologies, all network traffic is scanned, blocking any malicious attacks and filtering out network-borne threats like Ransomware & Malware across their entire network.
Technology Used
- 1000Mb and 100Mb MPLS leased line connections.
- Private site-to-site links
- ADSL & VDSL Broadband or 4G Mobile Data redundant backup connections.
- Next-Generation UTM (Unified Threat Management) firewalls
Results and Benefits
The branch offices have seen an improvement in network speed, in some cases, twenty times increase, from 5Mb/s to 100Mb/s. Furthermore, the new leased line connections are now backed by a 4 hour-to-fix SLA and have a secondary backup connection to minimize downtime in the event of any problems.
This has paved the way for Alliance to further improve its IT systems by making the management of branch IT equipment easier and allowing the use of cloud technologies such as Microsoft Office 365.