As students finally make their long-awaited return to the classroom, it is important that schools, colleges, and other institutes of education do not lose sight of the increasingly complex cyber security landscape they must navigate, and ensure the lessons learned throughout lockdown continue to be acted upon.
The past year of upheaval in the digital landscape has created a number of singular challenges for the Legal sector, in addition to firms' longstanding obligations around security and data governance.
"In the new contact centre, we're no longer reliant on hunt groups, and can onboard new services and new desks very easily, which has allowed for a much higher level of agility in terms of how we connect and collaborate with our colleagues and partners. We've also got a much higher level of control, so we don't need to go through our IT teams to make changes or updates when we need to, and can constantly refine our call flows."
Stacey Whyte, NHS Digital
Operating from offices in London, Norwich, and Cambridge, Conisbee offers structural and civil engineering solutions that have supported the creation of numerous award-winning buildings – ranging from simple refurbishments to the most complex new builds – across the UK and internationally.
Like other forward-thinking firms across the AEC sector, Conisbee have embraced the journey to the Cloud in order to optimise the overall flexibility, security, and resilience of their IT infrastructure. This journey took place in parallel with an expansion into a number of smaller regional offices, and the gradual phasing out of legacy systems, which presented additional challenges when it came to enabling seamless cross-site collaboration between teams and their clients, considering the scale and complexity of typical architectural models.
In order to manage these challenges and create an IT infrastructure that would support their ongoing growth and provide the ability to pivot in response to changes in the digital landscape, Conisbee selected Exponential-e as their Cloud and connectivity partner.
The inherent flexibility of this new infrastructure was proven in the early months of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced firms across the country to begin working remotely, in line with social distancing regulations.
Conisbee's Cloud journey continues, with the support of their Exponential-e account team. This will support effective hybrid working in the post-COVID landscape, with staff able to communicate and collaborate remotely, in the office, or on the move, accessing the critical platforms they depend on through a range of devices, with zero compromises in terms of either security or performance.
In this way, Conisbee's partnership demonstrates the value a well-considered digital transformation strategy, supported by a trusted technology partner, can bring to the AEC sector as a whole, allowing for tangible cost savings, more flexible working, and the successful delivery of the most innovative, sustainable, and enjoyable buildings.
01 A comprehensive guide to Exponential-e's portfolio of solutions and how they support the AEC sector's journey to full digital transformation
02 Proven strategies and processes, drawn directly from Exponential-e's experience with AEC leaders and numerous other sectors
03 Technology that drives future scalability, flexibility, and innovation, while allowing for full visibility and cost control
Launching in 1990, Glenn Howells Architects is a leading UK architectural design studio, with a 140‐ strong creative team delivering innovative projects from offices in both London and Birmingham - all driven by the belief that our physical spaces can make a tangible difference in the lives of both individuals and communities.
Like all companies within the architectural sector, Glenn Howells Architects depend on close collaboration between team members to deliver innovative designs that draw on the full scope of their creativity. While their legacy voice system, supplemented with multiple UC platforms, had proven adequate in this regard for some time, the onset of COVID‐19, and the resulting move to remote working, meant that the system was being utilised at a scale that had never been tried before. The system quickly revealed its limitations in this regard, having no softphone capabilities outside of the company VPN, and lacking the capacity to manage the number of team members now connecting to the corporate network via personal devices each day.
Having already established a strong working relationship with Exponential‐e over the years, they were selected as the technology partner to propose and deliver a solution in response to these challenges, ensuring the deployment would be achieved with minimal disruption and ensure the entire creative team could adapt to the new working model straight away.
Following a detailed analysis of their requirements, budget, and existing infrastructure, Microsoft Teams Calling, delivered through an as-a-Service model, proved a perfect fit for Glen Howells Architects' immediate and long-term needs.
As a Cloud-based solution, TCaaS was deployed rapidly across their infrastructure, under the supervision of a dedicated project team, who remained in regular contact before and after the deployment process to ensure its success and ensure any concerns could be swiftly resolved.
The project team were very informative, efficient, and successfully delivered a working solution to the agreed timeline. As a client, I felt I had no complaints about the delivery of the solution and support providing during and after the implementation.
Dharminder Grewal, IT Manager - Glen Howells Architects.
This hands-on support meant that uptake of the new solution across Glen Howells Architects' creative team was achieved extremely quickly, to the extent Teams became their default tool for remote collaboration between both colleagues and clients, completely replacing the previous, disparate selection of UC solutions.
The success of this deployment helped Glen Howells maintain their dynamic creative processes and customer engagement throughout the lockdowns of 2020, while simultaneously enhancing their future agility and scalability, and strengthening their working relationship with Exponential-e. Plans are already in place for further solutions to be integrated into Glen Howells Architects' IT infrastructure, in order to build on these successes.
01 A comprehensive guide to Exponential-e's portfolio of solutions and how they support the AEC sector's journey to full digital transformation
02 Proven strategies and processes, drawn directly from Exponential-e's experience with AEC leaders and numerous other sectors
03 Technology that drives future scalability, flexibility, and innovation, while allowing for full visibility and cost control
Partnership will help accelerate cancer diagnosis and improve digital pathology for the NHS
Exponential‐e, the leading specialist in connectivity, cloud and unified communications solutions has today announced it has become the strategic platform provider for The National Pathology Imaging Co‐operative (NPIC). Exponential‐e will support NPIC's development of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve diagnosis and help deliver core technology platforms to support its deployment of digital pathology in the NHS.
NPIC is a unique collaboration between NHS, academia and industry partners and a world‐leading centre for applying AI research to the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases NPIC will deploy digital pathology scanners in a network of over 30 NHS hospitals across England, including fully digitising the pathology labs in 15 hospitals across the North of England. These scanners will support the implementation of digital pathology, enabling pathologist to make diagnoses using the images and develop artificial intelligence tools to assist them. The programme will generate more than 2.4 million images per year, which equates to at least 3 petabytes of data.
NPIC required a market‐leading digital partner to help design, implement, host and manage the centralised service to store the images in high performance systems and ensure a highly responsive user experience for NHS front‐line workers. The public sector procurement governed the selection process led by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. This concluded with Exponential‐e being selected as the chosen delivery partner.
Exponential‐e now provides NPIC with a platform for its centralised picture archiving and communication system (PACS) to sit on. This system will process and store the images in the Dell EMC PowerScale in tandem with the Dell EMC ECS Enterprise Object Storage, enabling them to be retrieved rapidly and shared digitally with doctors and labs, with speed. As part of information lifecycle management the Exponential‐e platform will automatically manage files according to retention periods moving them down to a lower tier of data storage for long‐term retention and to help control the cost of data growth for the programme.
The platform, which will be fully managed by Exponential‐e across two 3‐ tier data centres, and will additionally provide high speed connectivity to hospitals that are partners on the NPIC programme.
Bash Hussain, Deployment Director at NPIC says: "We have achieved a key milestone for the NPIC programme which has significant infrastructure needs for storage and processing of clinical images. Working alongside Exponential‐e will provide the programme with a resilient, scalable platform needed to meet both our clinical and research ambitions."
Jonathan Bridges, Chief Innovation Officer at Exponential‐e adds: "The work that NPIC is doing to improve patient diagnosis with AI and digital pathology is truly revolutionary and we are thrilled to be a part of its ground‐breaking work. Being a chosen partner of this project further validates the deep expertise that Exponential‐e has in the healthcare and life sciences sectors, and we are very much looking forward to seeing what NPIC can achieve over the coming years with our expert, digital support."
As the service evolves, AI platforms will be layered on top of the Exponential‐e platform. This will enable better customer centricity and accelerated patient diagnosis through increased automation. Enabling large scale image comparison, it will also support research and advanced diagnosis and deep learning‐based pattern recognition. Whilst the ability to gather further clinical, radiologic and genomic data will help to accurately diagnose diseases.
Charles Wilce, Sr. Dir. EMEA Sales for Unstructured Data Solutions at Dell Technologies comments: "The combination of Dell EMC PowerScale and Dell EMC ECS object storage with Exponential‐e technology will deliver AI‐driven insight for NPIC to improve both the quality and outcomes of patient treatment. By harnessing this data in the most meaningful ways, we're able to help our customers drive human progress through data insights and technology innovation."
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"Not-for-profit organisations have provided a trusted and valued source of independent advice for people throughout England for many years. They are a vital part of our national support infrastructure and somewhere to turn to in times of crisis."
Nick Hurd, MP
Attracting top talent is just part of the picture when it comes to building a thriving, successful organisation. If employees are to achieve their full potential in both their professional and personal lives, it is essential to nurture their talents and cultivate the skills that will help them progress along their chosen career paths.
In July of 2019, Exponential-e hosted a roundtable at The Ritz London, bringing together 18 top UK architects to discuss topical issues across the sector and sharing views on the matters at hand. One of the topics raised was the newly launched Architects Declare manifesto and its 11-point plan for tackling climate change and biodiversity loss. From 16 founding signatories, word spread like wildfie and within weeks, hundreds of practices - large and small - signed up, signalling that our architects were ready commit to operating in a greener, more sustainable manner.
Exponential-e are pleased to announce that we are one of the forty-six winners at the 2021 Princess Royal Training, which acknowledge excellence in training and development across the UK. This represents Exponential-e's fifth PRTA award in three years - a huge achievement for our Learning & Development team.
Exponential-e's 2021 award pays tribute to the intensive training employees were provided with in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing them with the skills they needed to respond to customers' rapid move towards hybrid working throughout forty-three clinics, which were attended by 841 team members in total.
Training is a fundamental part of life at Exponential-e, helping our team members achieve their full potential. We extend our congratulations to the Learning & Development team, who have worked tirelessly to ensure the standard of training we offer continues to evolve, year after year.
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Exponential-e are pleased to announce that we have just been awarded the CCA Global Standard - a globally-recognised accreditation that acknowledges excellence in organisations' customer service strategies. The CCA assessment process looks closely at a number of areas, including managing the transition to new working models, agent wellbeing, monitoring and analytics, and the overall customer journey. Its long-term goal is to raise standards of customer service across all sectors.
Earning this accreditation is a testament to Exponential-e's commitment to developing robust processes, motivated and well-supported teams, and an exceptional customer experience. We thank everyone involved in the assessment process!
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Failure Demand: "Demand caused by failure to do something or do something right for the customer"
Seddon, 2003
Crown Commercial Services are shortly to launch the RM6100 Technology Services framework agreement in July 2021, and Exponential-e Ltd are delighted to announce that they have been named as a supplier on Crown Commercial Service's Technology Services 3 framework.
The breadth of services on offer by the overall Exponential-e Group extends across all Lots on this framework, which will enable us to engage with Public Sector organisations in support of the full range of transformational service requirements. RM6100 TS3 is expected to run for 4 years, until Summer 2025.
Exponential-e are able to supply service offerings to organisations, either by Direct Award (via Service Offers advertised on eMarketplace), or through a Further Competition process, across any of the following Lots:
Lot 1 - Technology Strategy and Service Design, which includes:
Lot 2 - Transition and Transformation, which includes:
Lot 3a - End User Support, which includes:
Lot 3b - Operational Management, which includes:
Lot 3C - Technical Management, which includes:
Lot 3D - Application and Data Management, which includes:
Lot 4 - Major Services Transformation Programmes
Exponential-e will be able to provide a range of services to deliver major services transformation programmes via this Lot. Services include:
Crown Commercial Service supports the public sector to achieve maximum commercial value when procuring common goods and services. In 2019/20, CCS helped the public sector to achieve commercial benefits worth over £1bn - supporting world-class public services that offer best value for taxpayers.
This is a tremendous achievement for Exponential-e Ltd, and as testament to the success of our Public Sector Business, and we expect to maximise our presence on this framework for the betterment of our customers, our own organisation and for the UK taxpayers as ultimate beneficiaries.
Lee Wade - CEO and Founder, Exponential-e.
Our Public Sector customers and prospects are already engaged to work with us, and we have every expectation of delivering best value for them, through this framework. We have a rich heritage operating as a trusted provider within the central and wider Public Sector markets, and our presence on Lot 4 specifically ensures our significant influence on the buying community continues to grow in strength and surety.
Afshin Attari - Director - Public Sector and Unified Platforms, Exponential-e.
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With the Tech industry celebrating International Women in Engineering last week, a new study of women in tech has found that:
Even as the end of lockdown approaches, it is clear that hybrid working is here to stay, with organisations utilising remote and office-based working on a flexible basis, in order to combine the advantages of both.
Selecting the right storage architecture is essential for organisations that are leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Big Data and IoT analytics. For example, AI applications that involve scientific and medical research create and interact with numerous large files, and therefore need a storage system that can scale to a petabyte level, with zero restrictions. Similarly, ML applications and Big Data projects require a scalable, cost-effective storage solution to accommodate the high volumes of data that will be produced. This raises the question of which storage solution enterprises should use to underpin their overall analytics strategies.
Throughout these unprecedented times, many Resellers and Systems Integrators have been forced to furlough team members or reduce headcount, creating leaner operations in order to weather the economic downturn. But as we now approach an economic return and ramp up our trading levels, these resourcing gaps can limit the services that resellers can take to market.
Passwords are often more associated with individual and consumer cyber security, but they are an essential part of an organisation's overall security posture. For example, you wouldn't leave the windows open overnight as this would allow easy access into the building for thieves. In the same way, a weak password offers cyber attackers easy access to your corporate infrastructure, after which they can use these credentials to escalate permissions until they granted themselves administration privileges, at which point the risk of financial and reputational damage becomes truly serious!
Global broadcasts place incredible demands on infrastructure, which must offer the performance and resilience required to accommodate the anticipated spikes in viewership. Exponential-e has worked closely with a number of world leaders across the broadcasting and media sector, providing fully integrated solutions that ensure their connectivity is of the very highest quality, freeing their own teams to focus on the broadcast itself, safe in the knowledge that they can completely depend on their technological foundation, no matter how many viewers around the world tune in.
Born in 2006 from the merger of the Endeavour and Teesdale housing associations, North Star is a forward-thinking housing association that not only builds affordable homes across the North of England, but helps create strong communities and personal connections wherever they operate, driving and taking part in numerous initiatives to make a lasting, positive difference in people's lives.
In 2016, North Star was preparing to welcome the Darlington Housing Association into its group. As the plans for this merger were put into place, it became clear that the complex legacy IT infrastructure was rapidly approaching the end of its lifecycle, and as a result, potential ways to future-proof and optimise it were presented for consideration.
In particular, with the increasing complexity of legal and compliance obligations, combined with an evolving cyber threat landscape, maintaining robust security and data protection was a key priority. Furthermore, while they had a Virtual Desktop solution in place, it had proven both slow and difficult to manage, which limited staff's options with regards to remote working and omnichannel communication with colleagues and residents.
In light of these concerns, and in order to bring the IT infrastructure back in line with their long-term business goals, North Star seized the opportunity to modernise their entire IT infrastructure, for which they engaged with Exponential-e.
Following a detailed review of North Star's goals, requirements and existing infrastructure, a full-scale Cloud migration was conducted, with the entire legacy infrastructure moved to a UK-based Virtual Data Centre, and full server replication to a second VDC, also hosted in the UK. This controlled migration process was managed by a dedicated account team from Exponential-e, ensuring the transformation was completed on time, to budget, and with minimal disruption to daily operations.
All eight North Star sites were connected with a high-performance WAN, ensuring consistent performance of the new Virtual Desktop for all teams, and - in turn - enhancing communication and collaboration.
The existing Virtual Desktop solution was completely replaced with Citrix Virtual Desktops, delivered as a fully managed service to ensure North Star's staff could begin making use of the solution's full capabilities as quickly as possible, and that any initial and future issues could be swiftly identified and resolved, without creating an unnecessary drain on internal IT teams' time and resources.
The managed services model was extended to the security ecosystem, with Exponential-e providing hands-on monitoring and drawing on cutting-edge threat intelligence to ensure the latest cyber threats could be pre-emptively dealt with and any potential weaknesses in the infrastructure could be resolved before they were exploited.
Throughout lockdown, with staff forced to work remotely, the new infrastructure proved invaluable, allowing staff and residents to remain in close contact through a range of channels, including voice, telephony, online chat, and email, with consistently high quality throughout. This not only allowed staff to remain as close to 'business as usual' as possible, but allowed residents to continue accessing essential services as easily as possible, with Exponential-e's monitoring of the infrastructure freeing staff to focus on first-class service delivery and quick resolutions.
The success of this migration represents the first steppingstone towards North Star's planned Cloud-first strategy, with a fully virtualised infrastructure providing the agility needed to effectively respond to unexpected changes in the digital landscape and the evolving needs of their residents.
Housing is an inherently people-focused sector, and IT infrastructure must support that. Our work with Exponential-e has proven essential in this regard, ensuring we can meet our own technology goals, while keeping our residents at the centre of everything we do.
Sean Lawless
Head of ITC and Digital, North Star
Helping housing associations drive digital initiatives that transform the tenant experience, underpinned by robust data security.
Find out more in our Housing Associations Brochure.
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