ProPac

Situation - With the development of the mobile telecommunications marketplace over the last decade, Orange™ has grown, since the company’s launch in 1994, to become the UK’s leading mobile operator. Allowing the company to maintain this position in such a competitive environment places huge demands on a continuously changing and developing corporate data networking infrastructure. 3net limited currently supply high-end consultancy services to Orange™ and are involved in a number of key initiatives within the organisation.

Problem - Orange™ was initially introduced to 3net limited by Nortel Networks Global Professional Services as a preferred Professional Services partner due to a major network outage in November 2000. Rapid growth of the network, and a continuous program of equipment migration, had lead to instability in the corporate data network infrastructure resulting in serious network supportability issues.

Implication - Instability in the corporate data network infrastructure would have an adverse impact on customer satisfaction, which is essential in maintaining customer loyalty and business growth, within this aggressive market sector.

Need - 3net limited were employed by Orange™ to stabilise the current network environment, improve network supportability, and to allow equipment migration policies to proceed in line with the significant mission critical drivers imposed by the business.

Business Solution

Scope - Our approach was to immediately attend to the stability issues of the network through an in depth analysis of the current infrastructure highlighting issues of significant concern and producing a targeted implementation plan.

Solution - The network infrastructure was predominantly a Nortel Networks ATM core deployment utilising LAN emulation services and Ethernet switching to the host devices. The LAN emulation services had been deployed to a distributed model, however due to the addition, over time, of a significant number of logical network entities, this model was proving to be both inefficient and unmanageable.

The implementation plan provided by 3net was centred on additional core routing services to improve routing performance and dual redundant core ATM switches to provide centralised LAN emulation services. The key was to migrate from the distributed services to the centralised model without affecting user connectivity and service availability. To achieve this a carefully managed and staged approach was taken that broke down the complex task of the migration into “bite size” pieces. This protected Orange™ form potential extended downtime due to the implementation of over complex network environment changes in tightly controlled change windows.

Deliverables - The successful and seamless migration ultimately not only stabilised and improved network performance but also allowed Orange™ to move confidently forward with initiatives such as Gigabit Ethernet migration and Network management.

Business Benefits

As a result of the above project 3net enjoy and maintain a position as a trusted technology partner to Orange™. 3net have a thorough understanding of the continuous requirements within the Orange™ Data Networking environment and are currently working closely with Orange™ to deliver key objectives.

The benefits to our customer are both financial and operational. Orange™ is confident that 3net expertise is always to hand to deliver support services and forming a part of their competitive edge.