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Accident Exchange turn to Huawei for new network installation

Zycko and RSI join forces to implement solution

4th December 2007 - Accident Exchange (AE), a vehicle replacement specialist, was moving into a new build property, on a very tight timescale, and they needed help to design and install their new network. The design brief was to provide a fully resilient, high performance network infrastructure, that would cater for the immediate and growing requirements of one of the UK’s fastest expanding businesses.

AE provide support services to the retail motor industry and ABI (Association of British Insurers) approved car hire on credit to motorists involved in non-fault accidents.

Employing over 500 full-time staff and operating a fleet of almost 3,600 executive and prestige vehicles, AE cater for customers of franchised dealers, contract hire companies and insurers, representing, amongst others, Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Lotus, Mercedes Benz and Porsche.

Zycko, the value-added distributor of best-in-class convergent infrastructure solutions, was engaged by partner RSI, who resell enterprise software and hardware solutions, to install the Huawei network for AE. After the formal design of the network and a presentation to senior AE staff had taken place, the equipment was ordered and the project was moved onto the implementation phase.

Key Challenges

Zycko engineers were faced with a tough challenge during the installation of the network. The new build was nothing more than a building site - no flooring, thick dust and numerous builders hampered their work at every turn. But the engineers battled through the various hardships and went that extra mile to ensure the solution was delivered on time, to the customer’s full satisfaction.

Ray Ford, director of technical services at Zycko, said: “It was definitely a challenge, but our engineers worked extremely hard to deliver the solution professionally and on time.

“A defining moment was when the chairman of the company asked us to power off one of the redundant core switches during an online day to see what happened. I am very pleased to report that all users were able to continue with their work, as the switches failed over without missing a beat.”

Impact of Huawei on AE

Huawei is a state of the art proven technology, which provides a clear and defined roadmap for AE’s future service delivery. Huawei technology enables AE to develop their network, which is critical, as AE have been expanding year on year, and have further aggressive expansion plans.

Mr Ford said: “The new network has enabled AE to expand the business as full occupancy of the building has now been completed. The installed network has also been expanded by the addition of new components over the past few months. AE now has the ability to build on its current environment.”

Barrie Lynch, RSI’s managing director, added: “Huawei provides an operable, manageable and expandable end to end network for AE based on industry standards.

“We combined our many years of experience, together with Huawei’s products, to provide a “best of breed”, “best fit” solution. AE no longer need to worry about their business growth plans outgrowing their corporate network infrastructure, in relation to functionality and expandability.”

The Business Benefits

Adam Denby, AE’s IT manager said: “Huawei technology has proved reliable, fast and cost effective and the equipment has performed very well.”

Huawei brings a very high performance infrastructure to AE, which in turn allows connectivity to the corporate infrastructure and delivers power to the desktop. This has freed AE from ongoing software costs, which it has experienced with previous equipment from another vendor.

The open systems approach of Huawei has greatly helped them as they can rest assured that if they decide to integrate any other equipment from different vendors, they have a suitable platform.

Mr Ford added: “AE has seen, during testing and live trial, that the resilient features which have been built into the network are real and demonstrable. AE can be confident that if a failure were to occur, their business would not be impacted.”

The system also provides future proofing to AE, in that it can easily scale to meet the expansion plans of AE, and it also has software functionality ready and waiting to go, as and when AE need it.

If you would like any more information on any of the topics above, please get in touch…

For more information:
Jill Duffell
hblmedia
E: jill@hblmedia.com
T: 020 7612 1830