Nuffield Health treats over 300,000 corporate and individual customers each year, and has 1,345 beds and 111 theatres across its 31 hospitals. The dedicated fibre will enable the swift and secure transit of key patient information and data from within its critical care systems.
Geo has provided Nuffield Health with a managed gigabit fibre connection running between data centres in Woking and central London, and a further gigabit connection from central London to Docklands. However, the fibre is entirely dedicated, enabling Nuffield Health to scale up to terabit capacity as and when its business requires, and at minimal additional cost.
During negotiations, Geo took Nuffield Health executives down into London’s sewers to see the security and diversity of the fibre infrastructure that would form its network. Buried at depths of up to 12 metres below ground, Geo’s network is safeguarded from the problems typical of street-level networks, such as disruption through maintenance works or cable theft. The existing sewer network also enables the rapid delivery of new projects, by simply lighting fibre that currently lies in wait.
“There is an ideal fit between the needs of Nuffield Health and Geo’s dedicated fibre proposition,” said Geo’s Sales Director, Andy Tipping. “Today’s organisations rely on the rapid, safe transit of priority data, and a private dedicated network is the optimum transit method. Our new network supports Nuffield Health’s strategy of focusing on network and data security, minimising risk and making its infrastructure resilient.”
“After opening a second group data centre, it was critical to us to find an infrastructure partner that could link the two, providing us security and scalability. We were under time restraints; we needed a company which could roll out a quick implementation and also be with us every step of the way,” said Nuffield Health CIO, Claire Myerson. “Geo delivered on all counts. The trip down into the sewers was unusual but entertaining, and feeling so involved in the project made the bespoke nature of the network even more apparent.”
The initial circuit was procured to very tight timescales and delivered in just 5 weeks; Nuffield Health began migrating data in June 2012 and is now fully switched over with 100% uptime to date.