Our Clients

E C Harris

Electra Partners | E C Harris | Reliance Security Services | Reebok

Enhancing communications and improving information flow

The Business Issue: EC Harris is a leading international Capital Project and Facilities Consultancy with approaching 1,800 employees worldwide. Through innovative application of traditional professional skills, developed processes and information, they deliver all aspects of a capital project and its ongoing operation. Faced with rapid expansion of their business, the flow of communication throughout the organisation was being constrained by the existing IT infrastructure. The increasing demands for network bandwidth could not be addressed with their existing solution and new applications under development could not be rolled out to the business.

Our Approach: a&o designed and installed a scalable, high performance wide area network to facilitate the use of essential business applications for the next five years. By providing impartial advice, a&o helped to identify a best fit approach with maximum flexibility. After a successful pilot project, the service was rolled out to the major EC Harris locations, with minimal disruption to the business. The technical installation services and project management was provided by a&o. In addition, the infrastructure is monitored 24x7 from the a&o Network Management Centre.

Key Benefits: The highly resilient network, connected using a diverse ring/mesh topology, was delivered over private ATMlinks. The network design provides resilient data paths and avoids any single point of failure. Automatic re-routing is built in to the architecturewhich permits continuity of service in the event of a component failure. The ability to add new office locations, increase bandwidth or deliver multimedia application (including voice) is also built into the solution. Through the use of sophisticated monitoring tools, a&o staff can remotely manage all aspects of the network and provide regular uptime and usage statistics.

Enabling Business Expansion: EC Harris are rapidly embracing new IT systems and increasingly depend on the availability of these business systems to service the needs of their clients. The delivered solution provides a reliable and flexible ‘fabric’ on which these tools can be deployed at a high performance and fixed cost.

As the delivery of information underwrites many of the services they provide, EC Harris have benefitted from the ability to provide this data more quickly and across a greater part of their organisation. In addition, it permits knowledge to be gathered and distributed more easily which helps to maintain their leadership position.

Partnership: Due to the dynamic nature of their business and aggressive growth plans, EC Harris required flexibility from their chosen service provider as well as the delivered solution. In addition, they required a long term commitment and a supplier willing to meet stringent service levels. a&o were able to meet all of these requirements, working in a true partnership to achieve the goals set.

By providing a managed service, a&o assume primary responsibility for the network, including change management and service level reporting. On-site maintenance is also provided for all elements of the network hardware. In addition, a&o consultants have been able to assist EC Harris with the development of their overall network strategy.

Paul Raine, Group Infrastructure Manager - EC Harris Comments: “The new network will enable us to provide optimum levels of service and develop our e-commerce projects and partnership.”