Earlier this year, Intrinsic Technology completed the installation of a completely new network infrastructure and telephony platform at South Lakes Housing. The new network is based on Cisco network and security technologies and Avaya for IP telephony.
South Lakes recently added 3,000 homes to its portfolio following a stock transfer from South Lakeland District Council, resulting in it relocating to larger offices in Kendal to cope with its substantial expansion.
As well as the IT challenges associated with relocating, South Lakes also wanted to move towards technological independence as it still had some ICT links with the council. This meant the implementation of a new network, telephony platform, wide area network, and the migration of its virtual VMware and NetApp infrastructure for its core housing applications, Active Directory and Exchange.
Intrinsic was chosen to design, implement and maintain a new local and wide area network, telephony and contact centre platform, and migrate key services to a virtual server and storage infrastructure.
After evaluating SLH’s existing network and future requirements, Intrinsic proposed a data infrastructure based on the latest Cisco network and security technologies. An Avaya IP Office system was proposed as the IP telephony platform, which also served as South Lakes’ contact centre function for better staff collaboration and customer service.
A new wide area network was set up to connect all of South Lakes’ key sites, including all of its sheltered housing schemes through a fibre and private broadband-connected network. Wireless access points were also installed at the schemes to support South Lakes’ digital inclusion plans. A secure remote working solution was also implemented to support the housing provider’s mobile workers.
The new infrastructure is underpinned by Fusion, Intrinsic’s managed services offering, which monitors the new infrastructure to ensure that South Lakes’ infrastructure is always available by identifying and responding to any problems before they affect the availability of services.
Lindsay Simons, director of Finance, South Lakes Housing, said, “The relocation of our headquarters provided us with the perfect opportunity to overhaul and transform our ICT, and Intrinsic has been the ideal partner to see us through that process.
“We’ve seen improvements both internally and in terms of tenant experience. The on-going support from Intrinsic has provided an extra layer of security, so we can get on with serving our tenants with the knowledge that our ICT systems will be running smoothly.”
