The project follows the acquisitions of a number of businesses in the past five years, most recently ControlCircle and Intercept IT in 2014.
“It was essential to bring these companies together under the Alternative brand, whilst consolidating people and places to integrate our broadening portfolio and secure fully aligned, incorporated, sales, customer services and operations functions,” explains Mark Quartermaine, Alternative’s COO. “Having recently moved into the new premises, we are already realising many operational and of course cultural benefits.”
One key feature of Alternative’s HQ is its demonstration lab which provides a window into, and access to, Alternative’s product and managed service propositions. The demo suite supports Alternative’s recognised approach of designing solutions with its customers around an established business objective, by applying appropriate technologies from its portfolio of cloud computing, virtualisation, managed hosting, fixed line voice, mobile, systems, IP networks and complex billing software solutions. The lab will be operational from the end of May.
As part of the consolidation of its operations, Alternative has made significant upgrades in its own IT infrastructure, shifting all its legacy on-premise IT infrastructure and hosted services into state-of-the-art managed secure datacentres. It has also upgraded and enhanced resilience as an essential part of its expansion of on-line cloud services.
Ed Spurrier, Alternative’s CEO, comments: “Alternative continues to grow and deliver robust results and strong cash flow, all in line with our strategic objectives. Our growth needs to be matched by enhanced working environments and technology and our new premises and IT infrastructure provide Alternative with a sound platform for future growth, providing more and better space, greater flexibility, increased opportunities and an organisation more efficiently resourced.”