Virgin Atlantic

About Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic was founded by entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson in 1984 with innovation and customer service at its core. Virgin Atlantic and its holiday business, Virgin Atlantic Holidays, employs over 5,700 people worldwide, serving 27 destinations across four continents. With a company culture that emphasises the importance of strong personal connections, a thriving partner ecosystem is essential to the continual development of Virgin Atlantic's technology infrastructure.

Challenges

In early 2017, Virgin Atlantic began the retender process for its technology network services. This was with a view to identifying opportunities for improvement, cost saving and new technologies, while simultaneously planning on simplifying and consolidating infrastructure with Virgin Atlantic Holidays. Exponential‐e had already acted as a technology supplier to Virgin Atlantic Holidays for several years, providing a range of services including data centre hosting and UK‐wide connectivity. Following this, the business was invited to tender for a series of network services including WAN, network security, WAN management and managed switching, with the aim of providing high‐performance, secure, and resilient infrastructure.

Beyond the stringent technical requirements, the tender process was focused on identifying technology partners who would be a good cultural fit with Virgin Atlantic. Both businesses share fundamental values of partnership, agility, an aligned approach to engagement and a drive to innovate. As an organisation that prides itself on creating deeply personal connections, Virgin Atlantic was keen to identify partners that would help drive the ongoing evolution of their infrastructure, rather than simply a transactional service provider.

Solution 

Following an extensive tender process, Exponential‐e were selected as one of the key technology network partners in Virgin Atlantic's network transformation and infrastructure merger.

The partnership proved a strong foundation for future growth, as shown in 2018, when a range of new services were deployed. These included tools for more reliable global remote access, which Exponential‐e successfully delivered in a matter of weeks. This proved invaluable throughout 2020, when the onset of COVID‐19 forced a move to remote working for much of Virgin Atlantic's workforce. This work was essential in helping office‐based staff to quickly adapt to new ways of working with minimal disruption.

We continue to build on these successes, allowing Virgin Atlantic people and partners to access the tools they need from anywhere. Zero compromise in security, performance and compliance underpins all work undertaken for the airline. The partnership between Exponential‐e and Virgin Atlantic highlights the value of collaboration, creativity and mutual trust when navigating an evolving digital landscape.