REED embarks on new carrier

Sirocom, the UKís fastest growing VNO, today unveiled another significant ëConverged VNOí contract with the announcement of a Ä17 million, 3 year deal with Reed Managed Services. In a landmark announcement, the Reed family of companies are set to achieve savings in excess of Ä5 million over the life of the service. Reed, best known for its high street recruitment operation ñ Reed Employment, with over 300 branches, also operates the UKís largest on-line job site, www.reed.co.uk, which features over 250,000 ëliveí jobs online at any time.

The service will support the converged voice and data needs of over 3000 IT users across 300 locations in the UK and Ireland, and will contribute to the Companyís strategic aim of reducing IT spend by 20% over the next 2 years. The service is key to the delivery of performance and productivity enhancing applications such as thin client and IP telephony. In addition, the managed service is a key driver in reducing complexity within Reedís IT infrastructure as the Company adapts to the diverse, but real-time dynamics of the fast-moving recruitment and human resources sector.

ìNo one carrier could meet our needs of building a Next Generation Network,î said Sean Whetstone, Head of IT Services at Reed. ìDisruptive technologies like broadband have become business grade and served as a catalyst for other cost saving and productivity enhancing applications like thin client. Finally, VoIP has come off ëpower pointí and become more compelling. To meet our needs we needed a blend of different services, flexibility ñ commercially and technically to migrate, and service guarantees that no one traditional carrier could underwrite; we quickly concluded that the VNO model could best satisfy our needs.î Said Whetstone.

ìAs one of only two UK based VNOís, Sirocom not only provided a single point of contact for the different service provision, and the economies of scale in terms of buying power, but significantly, had the only realistic migration path to convergence for our thin client and VoIP plans and didnít try to sell us ëvanillaí. To this end theyíve already illustrated their flexibility and innovation at point of service delivery by accelerating network deployment. And by offering us QoDSL for our high priority traffic like VoIP they are able to provide different classes of service for different applications.î Added Whetstone.

Simon Rogan, CEO at Sirocom commented. ìBusiness agility is by far the most important asset an enterprise can own. Being tied to one service provider over a fixed term or a technology solution sweated over a write down period is directly at odds with the building of business agility and fast becoming outdated. Todayís enterprise wants the flexibility to change and freedom of choice, and thatís exactly the vision Reed has bought into with the VNO proposition.î

ìAs a pure play VNO, we own no assets, nor do we have forward commit contracts to our service provider partners; this allows us the opportunity to provide Reed with a realistic migration strategy to complete convergence without the fear of being technology dead-ended, or stifled because of a lack of service innovation. This is the power of the VNO model, it allows our customers to make significant savings, reduce cost of ownership and complexity whilst quickly taking advantage of technology advances ñ in short weíre helping companies build business agility.î Enthused Rogan.

Reed Employment is one of a growing number of blue chip organisations buying into Sirocomís ëVoice with Visioní strategy. This strategy takes customers through a migration to true convergence in a realistic and manageable programme that offers initial cost savings through ëSpend Convergeí, further cost and operational savings through ëVoIP Blendí, and eventual full convergence with ëIP Centralí ñ a completely hosted, converged solution.