World-class connectivity for the finest luxury apartments
With eleven apartment-only locations across London and Dubai, Cheval Collection offers some of the world's finest, fully serviced apartments. Staff and residents alike expect the very highest quality connectivity, in order to ensure the very highest quality guest experiences, which means a highly secure, highly available, and high-performance network is essential for all locations.
In this video case study, Cheval Collection's Global Head of IT, Mustafa Gokcen, discusses how their partnership with Exponential-e has helped them make this a reality across every location, replacing cumbersome legacy connections with a world-class network that now serves as the foundation of their entire IT infrastructure.
477 Hits
The digital launchpad for life-changing training and apprenticeships
About JTL
Operating across England and Wales, JTL offers world-class training and apprenticeships in the fields of electrics, plumbing, and heating, providing aspiring tradespeople with the launchpad for successful, long-lasting careers.
Solution
Exponential-e's self-owned, enterprise-class network is the foundation of JTL's IT infrastructure, and - in turn - much of the training they deliver. Scalability is a critical factor here, ensuring new training sites can be opened and closed down as seamlessly as possible. New sites are typically deployed every 2-3 months, with sixteen sites in operation around England and Wales at the time of writing, and four more currently in the works.
This is highly scalable, highly available connectivity is complemented by a Cloud-based, AI-powered Contact Centre platform, ensuring trainees are always able to make contact with the right person throughout every stage of their programme, across an evolving range of channels. All trainee information is fully centralised throughout each stage of their programme, ensuring agents are able to resolve any queries as quickly as possible, with minimal points of contact required.
Exponential-e also provide additional support is also provided around the provisioning and management of key software licences, ensuring all staff and trainees are equipped with the tools they require, for the best possible rates.
JTL's account team at Exponential-e continue to work closely with their own IT team and other teams from across the company, identifying and acting on new opportunities for improvement and innovation. In this way, JTL's IT infrastructure can continue evolving in response to the needs of trainers, trainees, and apprentices, freeing them to focus on the learning experience
"The key thing about our partnership with Exponential-e is the reliability. Our connections rarely ever go down, and we're never in any doubt as to who to talk to for anything, whether that's launching a new site, or further consolidating and optimising our IT ecosystem. In this way, technology remains a powerful driver for the quality of training we are able to deliver."
Parth Parmar, Head of Technology, JTL
Challenges
JTL's training programmes depend on seamless communication between trainees, trainers, and administrative staff, all of which demands a highly resilient, scalable, and secure IT infrastructure. The deployment of new training sites, wherever and whenever they are needed, is also a critical priority, requiring close collaboration between JTL's own IT team and various third parties, including key technology partners.
Solution benefits
- World-class IT infrastructure in place for new training sites as soon as they open their doors
- highly scalable, highly available connectivity,
deployed at more than sixteen sites across England and Wales
- An omnichannel contact centre platform ensures a
smooth, stress-free experience for every trainee and apprentice, before,
during, and after their programmes
- Key Microsoft licences delivered as a fully
managed service, resulting in new cost savings and efficiencies
- Hands-on support from a dedicated account team around the opening of new training sites and ongoing service optimisations
371 Hits
For a number of years now, the evolution of the Retail sector has typically been positioned as brick-and-mortar shops - including many longstanding fixtures of UK highstreets - fighting a losing battle against online retailers, such as the seemingly monolithic Amazon. However, the reality of the situation is not quite so clear cut…
2953 Hits
The Finance sector has always been one of the most dynamic, rapidly evolving industries, and this shows no signs of changing any time soon. But while shifts in the landscape may well open new opportunities, they will also come with new challenges, and it is the organisations who are ready and able to face these head-on who will continue to thrive in the years ahead.
3080 Hits
The past decade has been a challenging one for the Retail sector, to say the least. Much has already been written about the impact of online shopping and streaming services on the high street, and the rise of COVID-19 and recent supply chain disruptions have only compounded the challenges facing even the most established brick-and-mortar retailers.
2635 Hits
When it comes to building brand loyalty, customers increasingly expect the retailers they shop from - whether that's online, in person, or via click-and-collect - to demonstrate tangible efforts to operate in an ethical, sustainable, and environmentally friendly manner in everything they do.
2795 Hits
For many years, retailers' CCTV systems and IT infrastructure have operated in relative isolation, competing for space and resources whilst never utilising the full potential of their combined power. The good news is that next-generation IT infrastructure is increasingly bridging this gap, in order to reduce costs, simplify infrastructure, and allow retailers to access a range of actionable data streams through AI and analytics.
3757 Hits
The Retail sector is more diverse, dynamic, and rapidly changing than any other time in its history. This not only encompasses the way customers make their purchases – with online shopping, click-and-collect, and in-person shopping all converging to offer true, end-to-end experiences – but also the way retailers open and operate new sites. Whether this means trendy pop-up shops, kiosks at other brands' locations, or booths at events, retailers from up-and-coming start-ups to global leaders are no longer relying on fixed high-street locations to welcome their customers and put their wares on display, instead making sure they are present wherever their ideal customers are, and fully prepared to offer a world-class experience that builds brand recognition and loyalty.
3066 Hits
Policymakers have now recognised that world-class digital connectivity and fast internet connections are as essential to the future of the society now as ports, railways, airports, and highways were throughout the last two centuries. Those systems transformed the way people lived and worked, irrevocably changing human conceptions of distance, speed, and time.
3069 Hits
The past few years have been challenging for the global Manufacturing sector, with both Brexit and COVID-19 creating a wide range of operational disruptions whose impact is still being felt. Indeed, as recently as January 2023, we saw UK manufacturing shrinking for the sixth consecutive month1.
3567 Hits
Manufacturing workflows are evolving at an unprecedented rate, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. The increasing effectiveness and affordability of 'smart' technologies and the Internet of Things means IT and OT are increasingly interconnected, with increasing volumes of data flowing between sites and devices on an ongoing basis.
2867 Hits
Although digital transformation amongst Legal firms has typically been comparatively slow compared to other sectors, the journey has picked up speed over the course of the last decade.
3053 Hits
Like many fixtures of our lives, Britain's pubs were heavily impacted by COVID-19, with their familiar patrons unable to come in for a post-work drink, or meet with friends at the weekend. But while it was undoubtedly a difficult period for the industry as a whole, this great British institution did as it has always done, and adapted to suit its patrons' evolving requirements.
3695 Hits
Now more than ever, organisations across the public and private sectors depend on seamless, secure, and high-quality communications. Even with an increasing range of channels having established themselves in recent years - including voice, email, video, and SMS - voice services remain a key part of how we communicate and collaborate.
3053 Hits
With fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour, changing economic conditions, and a rapidly evolving regulatory environment, it's a challenging but exciting time for the UK's retail sector, and technology has a key role to play. In particular, advances in IT and networking solutions are empowering retailers to enhance their operational efficiency, improve the customer experience, and retain their competitive edge in an increasingly online and interconnected world.
3705 Hits
The security of enterprise networks is a critical priority for all organisations across the public and private sectors, as they are forced to contend with an increasingly turbulent cyber threat landscape. As a result, network teams increasingly find their roles overlap with their organisations' cyber security strategies, with numerous siloed elements now converging.
2226 Hits
Across the Hospitality & Leisure sector, from pubs to five-star hotels - guests' expectations have evolved in ways that would have been impossible to imagine just a decade ago.
1499 Hits
We've been hearing about the impending demise of the high street for years now, ever since online shopping and click-and-collect established themselves as part of our day-to-day lives. And yet, while brick-and-mortar retail has certainly been through a great many challenges and upheavals, it doesn't show any sign of going away quite yet. Rather than simply expecting customers to be content with previous generations' shopping experiences, the sector has demonstrated considerable ingenuity by taking full advantage of emerging technologies to deliver the kind of personalisation that would previously have been the sole preserve of online platforms.
1990 Hits
The retail playbook has been fundamentally rewritten. Customer journeys are omnichannel by default, IoT sensors are now omnipresent in both warehouses and shop floors, and AI is moving from pilot to P&L at an unprecedented pace. And the results are already proving transformative:
- Time-to-open: New stores and pop-ups are networked, secured, and POS-ready in days, not weeks.
- CX becomes predictive: Personalised offers and staffing respond to real-time signals, not yesterday's batch.
- Shrink is minimised: Vision-based loss prevention, plus better on-shelf availability.
- Cost-to-serve falls: Energy, logistics, and labour are optimised by rich streams of real-time date.
- Audits are boring (in a good way!): PCI and security postures are continuously and consistently maintained across estates and partners.
But in the race to access all these potential benefits, the winners aren't the ones with the flashiest demos – they're the ones with a rock-solid digital foundation that lets AI and IoT platforms scale safely, securely, and intelligently, store by store.
So, from Exponential-e's vantage point across cloud, connectivity, cyber, and communications, and our ongoing conversations with top retailers across the UK, here's what "AI/IoT-ready" actually means for the sector, and how we can begin laying those all-important foundations…
A network built for real-time, store-level intelligence
IoT and AI thrive on low latency and high availability, particularly when Point of Sale (PoS), inventory, and computer-vision workloads are increasingly interconnected. That means the underling WAN stops being a cost line and becomes a growth platform. Frictionless shopping experiences, incorporating queue-free checkout, real-time offers, and dynamic pricing, depend on fast, reliable data flows at the edge.
Software-defined networking, built on a private VPLS core, makes this practical at scale, offering centralised control, application-aware routing, seamless use of diverse access (i.e. ethernet, 4G/5G), and integrated security. Beyond the immediate operational advantages of avoiding hairpinning over the public internet and low, predictable latency, such networks offer the scalability and agility needed for pop-ups, seasonal peaks, and new store openings, where day-one uptime and policy consistency are required.
This should be complemented with enterprise IoT/M2M SIMs that deliver multi-carrier access and centralised control for store sensors, handhelds, lockers, smart signage, and similar devices.
Cloud and edge compute as a single, unified platform
AI-assisted retail is a hybrid sport: heavy training and data engineering in the Cloud, instant inference and control at the edge. To this end, retailers pursuing "always-on", augmented stores are converging 5G, IoT, and AI with edge compute to deliver truly personalised experiences in the moment, not hours later. This next-gen local processing, with edge computing implemented in every store, delivers a seamless PoS for customers, while simultaneously optimising staff's efficiency and reducing backhaul costs.
In the longer term, centralised data platforms and AI services can crunch multi-store telemetry for demand forecasting, replenishment, and customer analytics, offering a rich stream of actionable insights that enable reduced energy usage, automated restocking tasks, and smoother labour scheduling - immediate, powerful operational wins.
These capabilities can be developed into a standardised model and then be deployed, managed, and scaled consistently across new sites as retailers expand their operations. It's no surprise that multiple European retailers are already doing exactly this to not only protect their immediate margin and availability, but also accelerate their future growth plans.
Embracing the 'secure by design' model
Retail IT estates increasingly span POS, e-commerce, click-and-collect, and IoT devices. However, more devices and more data mean an increased attack surface, particularly when it comes to customers' payment data. As a result, robust security must be embedded in the design of all systems, platform, and processes, not bolted on later. Forward-thinking retailers are already rolling out this 'secure by design' approach, building customer trust through multi-layered, PCI-DSS-ready security ecosystems that allow for continuous monitoring and intelligently automated policy enforcement.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) has a key role to play here, converging network and security in the Cloud and offering numerous pathways to establishing identity-centric access, micro-segmentation of IoT devices, and uniform policies across stores and partners. Even with thousands of distributed end points, all this can be accessed through a single pane of glass - a "single source of truth" for all networks, devices, and workloads.
Taking the next step of your AI/IoT journey
AI and IoT in retail aren't separate projects; they must be treated as fundamental parts of a single, software-defined platform that reaches every shelf, sensor, and checkout. Build the network and edge right, wrap it with zero-trust security, and connect it to a governed data and AI backbone, then scale and optimise what works.
If you'd like this distilled into a tailored blueprint for your own estate (i.e. current stores, formats, and use-case priorities), we can map the stack, identify quick wins, and sequence the roadmap to outcomes, with everything overlaid by a single SLA, as a fully integrated service. Get in touch to discuss your own AI and IoT goals and let's make sure you're building on the right digital foundation!
1332 Hits
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.
3014 Hits
© 2026 Exponential-e Ltd. Reg. No. 04499567, Reg. Address:100 Leman Street, London E1 8EU