COMPANY PROFILE Troubleshooter aims for o
Market trends and technological advances such as the cloud are playing into the hands of connectivity specialists such as Networks First, according to Sara Gemmell, Managing Director.
I
ndependent converged network support services organisation Networks First was established in 1990 with funding from a small team of directors and private equity investment as an integration business. In 2003/4 its senior management team bought out the investment company’s shares and the decision was made to rationalise its proposition, no longer offering products such as cabling to focus instead on value added network services. It works the same model today.
Headquartered in Redditch, Networks First’s engineers operate across the UK
working with partners such as Atos Origin, BT Global Services, Cisco and Mitel. A centralised Service Desk, Network Operations Centre and Technical Assistance Centre act as the nerve centre of the business, backed up by a spares inventory in excess of £4.5 million and a four-hour spares delivery guarantee. Networks First’s client list includes Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, West Midlands Ambulance Service, NFU Mutual and Wragge & Co.
Sara Gemmell
Technology developments and step changes in working practices are driving business to Networks First. “In particular, we are seeing a
EMPOWERING THE NETWORK
Networks First’s services can be divided into two main areas, Network Management Services and Professional Services: Networks First’s Network Management Services include network support, network monitoring, network management (a pro-active service that incorporates intelligent tolls and engineering services to analyse and pre-empt incidents, ensuring high network availability). The range of Professional Services include pre-deployment (helping customers understand how proposed new services will perform on their existing infrastructure, and what can be done to improve that performance), health checks, implementation and project rollouts, and security, including Managed Firewalls and LAN security services.
huge rise in projects relating to virtualisation and cloud- based technologies and services where the customer needs to understand what strain they might put on the network and how it will perform,” commented Gemmell. “If anything, cloud has made the network more important because it provides the connectivity which is the critical link to an optimum user experience.”
The other area driving growth for Networks First is the rise of mobile and home working. This creates challenges in terms of
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Cloud has made the network more important because it provides the connectivity
security and ensuring the user experience remains the same from any location. “If the network performance is optimised and secured for the demands being placed on it then the user experience meets expectations, helping staff to work effectively from any location. That is
what we deliver through our expertise and services,” commented Gemmell.
Having a network that performs, delivers high availability and provides users with the experience they expect makes for a more productive business.
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