About North Star

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.

Challenges

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.

Solution 

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.

About Leeds Teaching Hospitals

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is part of the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT) - a partnership between six hospital trusts across West Yorkshire and Harrogate that deliver acute services, combining their collective experience, expertise and resources to deliver the very highest standard of patient care across the entire region.

Challenges

With a high daily throughput of patients, staff and products, efficiency, scalability, and operational resilience are of vital importance for the hospital trusts that make up the WYAAT. In 2018, Leeds Teaching Hospitals prepared a business case for collaborative supply chain management, driven by a full transformation of the legacy IT infrastructure.

Building on the success of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Scan4Safety programme, this change would allow for automated data capture at every point of the patient journey, storing patient records and details of any supplies ordered and utilised in the Cloud, allowing for staff to track their efficacy and ensure only the best equipment is utilised, for the best available price. In this way, paper-based processes would give way to a cutting-edge IT infrastructure that would support real-time communication and collaboration across all sites and streamline the process of ordering medical supplies, with all electronic health records updated in real-time, and expediting the recall and reorder processes. This would not only enhance patient outcomes across the entire network and reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, but also provide WYAAT with full control and visibility of its supply chain, for improved quality and cost control.

Such processes are typically quite time-consuming with traditional paper-based record keeping, but the scalability and flexibility of the Cloud would ensure this critical data could be kept secure, in line with all applicable healthcare regulations, while still providing actionable insights across all six sites – insights that could then be used to drive higher standards of care across the entire UK.

However, to achieve this, high-performance connectivity between all six WYAAT sites and their supply chain provider was vital, which meant the search began for a technology partner who could support a full-scale digital transformation, with Leeds Teaching Hospitals leading the initiative.

Solution 

Leeds Teaching Hospitals engaged with Exponential-e to provide support for the entire WYAAT, due to a number of factors, including compliance with GDPR and HSCN requirements, and the ability to ensure a swift deployment, with zero disruption to patient care and administrative operations, thanks to previous experience executing similar deployments across the UK healthcare sector.

At the outset of the project, a dedicated account team at Exponential-e connected with internal IT teams at all six WYAAT trusts, and their US-based supply chain provider, establishing a project plan that would involve all parties concerned in order to ensure an efficient, stress-free deployment. Given the complexity of the desired solution, three-way communication has proven essential to the success of this project and led to a strong rapport developing between teams across each region, with regular communication helping drive the desired outcomes.

All six WYAAT sites were connected to a single server farm, consisting of four servers with full replication, to ensure operational resilience. Throughout this deployment process, Exponential-e conducted intensive testing, to ensure the resulting infrastructure will provide fully consistent, reliable performance across all sites, reviewing the findings with the WYAAT's own teams to identify opportunities for further growth and improvement.

About NHS Digital

NHS Digital is the entire UK health and social care system's trusted information and technology partner, utilising innovative solutions to enhance patient care, open new channels of communication, and optimise operational efficiency.

The Challenge

Solution 

After being introduced to Exponential-e via referral, NHS Digital engaged with them to support their Cloud Connect requirements, providing diverse and resilient connectivity to AWS and Azure public clouds. To manage this initial deployment, a dedicated account team was assigned at Exponential-e, working closely with NHS Digital's own IT teams to ensure the success of the project, provide hands-on support and guidance whenever needed, and enable the design and delivery of bespoke solutions, as required.

Since then, the partnership has continued to evolve, with 2018 seeing NHS Digital begin the deployment of Exponential-e's SD-WAN solution, in order to overcome their connectivity challenges in a changing digital landscape. Following its successful launch, this solution provided NHS Digital's IT teams with maximum control and visibility of their cross-site connectivity, while automating all data encryption and protection processes, removing the resulting drain on internal IT teams' time. The combination of intelligent automation with a 'single pane of glass' view of the entire network and security ecosystem allows NHS Digital Teams to manage traffic by application and by user, ensuring all staff have access to the tools and information they need, wherever they are working from, with consistent performance across all regions and encryption of sensitive data available with a single click via the portal.

The strong rapport that has developed between NHS Digital and their Exponential-e account team since the initial Cloud Connect deployment - along with the inherent flexibility and scalability of the IT infrastructure - helped ensure a smooth transition to remote working for staff in response to COVID-19. Operational efficiency and patient care could be maintained across all regions, with proactive monitoring from Exponential-e's 24 / 7 support team, ensuring any potential issues or security risks could be swiftly detected and resolved.

Entering 2021, the Leeds Government Hub was successfully launched, in line with Government-led initiatives, with high-capacity connectivity delivered by Exponential-e. This provided more than 3,000 staff with the means to maintain operational efficiency and cost control, while NHS Digital and Exponential-e teams continue working closely together to identify any additional opportunities to achieve new cost savings and performance improvements, including the delivery of bespoke solutions, tailored to NHS Digital's unique requirements.

The ongoing success of this partnership paints a clear picture of what can be achieved within the healthcare sector when internal IT teams combine their expertise with that of trusted partners, who are deeply invested in the success of the sector and the different ways in which technological innovations can enhance both operational efficiencies and patient care, across the entire UK.

About Tandem Money

Tandem is 'The Good Green Bank', a fully regulated digital app‐based bank founded on the idea of putting customers' needs first whilst helping them save more than just their money by pushing for a sustainable future. The acquisition of green lender Allium in 2020, an established green homes lender, accelerated Tandem's mission into the green space. Tandem offers savings, mortgages, and loans to help customers green their properties, and eventually their lives.

Challenges

The key driver behind Tandem's ongoing digital transformation was earning a full banking license in 2018 - something that had been a core focus of their infrastructure's evolution. This meant their infrastructure would need to fulfil all legal and compliance obligations around the handling of financial data, and also demonstrate the highest standard of operational resilience.

At the time, Tandem's IT and telephony infrastructure was hosted at various separate data centres, while their banking application was hosted on AWS services, and a separate site set aside for workplace recovery. Although multiple sites were involved here, the whole network depended on the London office, creating a single point of failure.

After a comprehensive evaluation of various suppliers, Tandem engaged with Exponential‐e to ensure these critical elements could be securely interconnected in order to maximise performance and scalability and ensure all requirements for full bank status were achieved. Exponential‐e's deep experience in the financial sector was critical here, providing Tandem with complete confidence that the partnership would provide a positive contribution to their journey.

Solution 

The networking solution delivered by Exponential‐e interconnected all Tandem sites via a high-performance WAN - a fully managed low‐latency solution that ensured consistent performance across all sites. This was implemented by a dedicated Exponential‐e account team, who project managed every stage of the deployment to ensure there would be no service disruption and that Tandem's long-term goals remained the primary focus throughout the deployment and beyond.

Critically, this fulfilled all compliance requirements regarding the handling and storage of financial data, while ensuring Tandem's teams would have the right tools at their fingertips at all times. To ensure a disruption free migration process, secure connections were created between Exponential-e's self‐owned network and Tandem's AWS services, allowing for a successful consolidation of the different elements of their infrastructure, and providing IT teams with a higher level of control and visibility.

As the partnership between Tandem and Exponential‐e evolved, a combination of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Office 365 was established as the ideal combination of solutions to further optimise Tandem's overall efficiency and enable effortless collaboration between their various teams, regardless of where they were located, with security policies applied automatically and role‐based segregation opening up a wide range of opportunities for remote working.

Throughout 2020, when the COVID‐19 pandemic forced organisations worldwide to rapidly transition to a remote workforce, the inherent flexibility and scalability of Tandem's infrastructure and a robust business continuity plan showed its true worth, as the entire workforce were able to begin working remotely with minimal disruption to day‐to‐day operations, and no compromise in terms of security and compliance. This option had already been utilised on an ad‐hoc basis by Tandem's engineers, but a scenario where it would need to be utilised on a company‐wide basis had been considered and factored into the business continuity plan, with tests taking place to ensure such measures would be viable, should they ever be needed.

In this way, Tandem has demonstrated how the right infrastructure, with the support of the right technology partner, provides organisations in even the most challenging sectors with the agility to pivot in response to unexpected, large‐scale shifts in the digital landscape. Tandem's long‐term digital transformation continues, with plans in place to bring its core banking suite in house and into the Cloud, for a further layer of control and flexibility.

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.

About Cottsway Housing

Operating across West Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire, Cottsway Housing provides and maintains rental and shared ownership properties for more than 10,000 tenants, from single-person flats to family homes.

Challenges

As a company that emphasises the importance of openness and engagement between staff and tenants, Cottsway has always relied on its internal and external telecommunications solutions. However, their legacy PBX phone system, hosted on-site, eventually became challenging and time-consuming to manage. Concerns over this single point of failure were compounded by the difficulty of simultaneously managing Microsoft Teams for internal use. This combination of legacy systems and disparate platforms meant actionable analytics were difficult to achieve, thanks to a lack of oversight of all channels of communication.

Solution 

Exponential-e proposed, designed and delivered a completely new communications ecosystem for Cottsway, utilising Direct Routing with Microsoft Teams, combined with resilient SIP trunking for external calls. This unified solution successfully consolidated Cottsway's telecommunications ecosystem while providing a range of additional tools for both internal and external communications. At the same time, to answer the ongoing need for effective analytics and reporting, Exponential-e's Contact Centre solution was deployed, allowing for all customer communications to be tracked and monitored, providing managers with comprehensive reporting and a real-time overview of customer satisfaction across the entire organisation.

The new choice of communication channels, combined with dramatically improved call quality, had a highly positive effect on Cottsway's overall levels of customer satisfaction, while staff voiced appreciation of the improved level of collaboration between teams, and the volume of high-quality training material that was now accessible online, thanks to the roll-out of automated call recording.

During 2020, and the forced move to a distributed workforce in response to COVID-19, this infrastructure proved invaluable in allowing Cottsway's teams to begin working remotely with minimal disruption, maintaining contact with their tenants through the same channels, with the same high standard of performance.