The organisation has made it its mission ‘to establish a truly open register of business information’ by offering free data access to users on over 170m digital records on UK companies and directors.
As a result, Companies House issued a tender for a revamped network connecting its main office in Cardiff to four other locations - London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Newport. Not only did the new network have to be resilient, it also needed to be cost-effective to align with the Agency’s efficiency plan.
Companies House needed to both upgrade its existing MPLS network, and, as the agency is now using Amazon AWS public cloud to store, access and share data, it needed to add a private Cloud connectivity service to ensure maximum security, cut costs and provide a more consistent network experience.
After a rigorous tendering process, hSo was appointed to design and deploy the five site data network for the organisation. hSo is one of the few SMEs to be appointed to the one year old Network Services Framework (RM1045) and has extensive experience delivering and supporting data connectivity services, based on its own MPLS core network. It also provides a direct connection to Amazon AWS from its data centres. The supplier’s cost-competitiveness, carrier-independence and flexibility in terms of requirements convinced the agency that hSo could help them in achieving its goals.
Chris Evans, Managing Director of hSo said the following in respect to the client win:
“Companies House has been a leader in the provision of digital services in the public sector over the past few years. To remain at the forefront and keep up with the vast amount of traffic they receive every day, they needed a provider that could meet all their requirements. Someone who could offer high bandwidth connectivity without compromising on security and cost-effectiveness.”
Says Steve Pitt, Head of Procurement at Companies House added:
“hSo understood our challenges and have worked with us to implement a robust and resilient dual-carrier Wide Area Network (WAN) solution that can cope with increasing capacity demand whilst ensuring the data is completely secure.”