16 January 2003 -- ICT solutions and services provider Getronics, London, has designed a global virtual private network over the Internet linking British Councils 218 town and city offices in 109 countries worldwide. The British Council is the UK's international organisation for education and cultural relations.
The EUR1.5m contract included design, supply, pilot deployment and configuration of core network infrastructure using Cisco Systems technology. Getronics provided training to the British Council allowing their own IT department to deploy the majority of the global network.
Ronnie Parkes technical manager of The British Council said, "We needed a technology partner that could evaluate our needs, design and then implement the right solution. Getronics has provided the British Council with a cost effective network that will significantly raise quality of service levels and meet growing connection and bandwidth needs - precisely what we required."
The VPN runs over a shared or public infrastructure and provides security and extensive scalability with significant cost savings over a carrier network. Internal email now travels securely over the VPN, providing for the first time confidentiality to internal communication. Financial system application will soon follow along with other global applications.
Mark Beck, Getronics Technical Consultant said, "The British Council network is a perfect example of how an Internet site to site VPN can meet diverse and complex needs. It provides The Council with the flexibility to accommodate the numerous individual connection set-ups that are in place across the world."
Getronics UK & Ireland
Getronics is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) company, specialising in the financial services and telecommunications markets. With over 1,700 highly skilled employees, Getronics UK is one of the largest of the 30 Getronics subsidiaries worldwide.
It claims to help many of the world's largest global and local organisations to maximise the value of their technology investment and improve interaction with their customers hrough consulting, integrating, implementing and managing infrastructure and business solutions.