Turley Associates is the UK’s leading independent planning and urban design consultancy, operating nationally, regionally and locally from a network of nine offices. It currently has 140 members of staff, 86 of whom are chartered planners and 25 of whom are qualified urban designers. IT systems were based upon a Frame Relay Wide Area Network (WAN) centralised at the Manchester Head Office with varying bandwidths depending on site.
BACKGROUND
The data-centre of the WAN, based in Manchester, consisted of 16 servers running a variety of applications including Exchange, SQL and Citrix on an Active Directory platform. Cisco hardware had been implemented throughout all sites to provide the basis of each LAN with WAN connectivity managed by their Internet Services Provider. Turley Associates was aware that its network had undergone significant change since the existing technology was first introduced and that this trend appeared likely to continue into the future.
Users had complained of slow connections from remote sites and with plans to expand the system in terms of number of users and the types of services offered across the links it was expected that the connection speed experienced would degrade further.
APPROACH
SICL embarked upon a full Network Analysis drawing on the experience of its qualified Cisco Certified Design Personnel. SICL utilised the Fluke Optiview™ analysis tool, which covers all 7 layers of the OSI model, to capture the type of data, taking a copy of the packets on the network and analysing traffic. The goals of the analysis were to gather the information necessary to make good decisions when planning future applications on the network and to ensure optimum network performance. Turley Associates also wanted to identify potential issues before they affected the network and to plan for additional investment in networking technologies.
SICL provided full documentation of all findings and recommendations in a Network Analysis Report.
RESULTS
The Network Analysis Report provided Turley Associates with recommendations in order to optimise the performance of the existing infrastructure. In addition to measuring the network SICL was also able to highlight potential future issues enabling Turley Associates to take precautionary measures and minimise the impact of these issues on the network. It provided Turley Associates with an independent, expert, opinion on how to develop the network and enable the business to grow and prosper.
Following this period of consultancy SICL was able to present a strong business case to implement a fully-meshed BT MPLS WAN solution as a clear upgrade path for Turley Associates. The information supplied by SICL for the Head Office and remote locations also provided valuable information as a baseline for future analysis and comparative data.
“The information collected and provided by SICL has proved to be invaluable when considering future investment in our systems. We now have an independent opinion of why we have experienced issues in the past and how we need to develop our systems in the future. The experience and professionalism of SICL’s staff has instilled me with a high level of trust in them”
Liam Diamond
Turley Associates, IT Director.