Notting Hill Housing WAN

THE COMPANY

The opportunity to work alongside an organisation that is genuinely doing the very best it can for the residents of London was a challenge that the team at Fluid were delighted to accept.  Fluid’s history of working with complex, multi-site, large public and private organisations meant that, in terms of expertise, market knowledge and ability to deliver services with minimal disruption, Fluid was the perfect match for this particular client.

Notting Hill Housing is one of the largest London housing associations in the UK and has also built a reputation for being one of the most innovative and forward-looking.  The Notting Hill Housing Association has been serving the community for more than 50 years, but this is an organisation that is very much geared towards meeting the demands of the 21st century.

Managing more than 31,000 properties across the capital and with plans to build 1,400 new homes every year, the purpose of Notting Hill Housing remains the same as it was in 1963 – the year it was founded – to provide good quality homes for those who could not otherwise afford them.  The organisation is one of the G15 group – the 15 largest housing providers in London – and has won countless awards for creative, sustainable and high-quality designs.

The business, which operates under the Notting Hill Housing Group, is self-sufficient, working with a number of private and public bodies.  It is also recognised and respected as a robust operator, a quality which gives the group the freedom to be entrepreneurial and use its asset base creatively.

Moving forwards into the third decade of the 21st century, Notting Hill Housing is still looking for ways to drive innovation.

HOW WE DELIVERED

Fluid is one of the partners that this innovative housing association has chosen to work with.  With three large offices and a further 45 remote sites within London, Notting Hill Housing wanted to determine its requirements for a managed WAN service.  A review would reveal whether the service needed partial replacement or renewal and Fluid’s expertise in this field meant that NHH would get impartial, independent advice on all aspects of its IT network.

Fluid would create a structured and phased approach to investigate, outline and address the needs of Notting Hill Housing in relation to its WAN services.  This process involved:

• Capture of technical requirements based on the technologies and applications being delivered to end users and traffic between sites.
• Profile bandwidth requirements at each site based on usage/application/future planning/redundancy.
• Define the procurement route, which included evaluating Open OJEU and Framework processes as NHH receive public funding.
• Work with NHH’s procurement and IT technical teams to hone supplier selection.

Technology: WAN MPLS Connectivity, Cisco Switches and Cisco Meraki Access Points.