Keeping communities connected
Nasstar lowers costs and improves valuable uptime with bespoke end-to-end service
Churchill Retirement Living is one of the UK’s premier developers of high-quality, purpose-built retirement apartments and independent later-living communities. Privately owned and family-run since 1994, Churchill is headquartered in Ringwood, Hampshire, with regional offices across the country.
Services
Colocation
The Brief
Churchill Retirement Living was growing increasingly concerned with the security of its on-premise IT infrastructure. Its lack of redundancy was resulting in low levels of resilience, leaving the business vulnerable to security and performance issues.
To resolve these concerns and improve overall IT security and connectivity, Churchill Retirement Living looked to its long-standing technology partner, Nasstar to implement a hosting solution.
Utilising Nasstar’s Colocation service meant the business would benefit from extensive network connectivity between its sites and increased infrastructure uptime, all whilst reducing operating costs.
The Benefits
Churchill is now enjoying the benefits of Colocation and an upgraded MPLS network, which include;
- Improved resilience.
- Faster connectivity and data transmission.
- Significant decrease in costs.
- 24/7 security in Nasstar’s ISO 27001 accredited and PCI DSS certified datacentre, secure remote access, and a safer network connection.
- Full end-to-end solution provided by Nasstar.
Each of Churchill’s main sites now also has a backup connection into the datacentre via a primary fibre connection, as well as a secondary backup ensuring rapid recovery and preventing downtime, whilst safeguarding vital customer data.
The Solution
Nasstar designed and implemented a Colocation move of Churchill Retirement Living’s IT infrastructure, from its Head Office to Nasstar's datacentre in Bournemouth. Nasstar also provided improved connectivity to all three of Churchill Retirement Living’s sites directly to the datacentre through new BT 100MB uncontended fibre links. This was at a lower annual cost than their previous site-to-site links.
Remote Access was originally provided to users via a VPN solution - where users connect via a Juniper Netscreen Remote VPN client software and a provided policy file – and was rented from Virgin/NTL as part of Churchill’s existing leased-line package. Nasstar also installed a new FortiGate firewall, which was purchased outright by Churchill and delivered instant cost savings, higher throughput, better performance and the ability to provide SSL VPN access to any user.
Utilising Nasstar’s Colocation service has provided us with the security and reliability we needed from our infrastructure. As our long-standing technology partner, Nasstar knows our business and understood exactly what we needed to resolve our issues. Our increased connectivity speed and upgraded network has significantly increased uptime and improved the user experience for both customers and staff - just when we needed it most. “With continued support from the expert team at Nasstar, we can serve our customers more efficiently and securely than ever before. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Nasstar for many years to come.”