Together, Pulsant and Commsworld are working to deliver better networks and cloud solutions to this region, ensuring that Scottish businesses receive local connectivity to local cloud, speeding up performance, accessibility and availability.
Challenge: Expanding in line with Scottish growth
This collaboration is underscored by a recent significant network expansion between Edinburgh and Glasgow. With Commsworld experiencing a fast rate of growth, the company took the opportunity to develop a dedicated and self-maintained network to run between the two cities to ensure customers received the best possible service.
“We always had an ambition to operate our network at the lowest level possible; to operate the fibre itself as opposed to buying managed services from other companies,” comments Charlie Boisseau, chief technology officer of Commsworld.
“Most of the customers we work with are enterprise based, and a lot of the legal firms and accountancy firms based in Scotland that we work with tend to have offices in both Edinburgh and Glasgow, which means that there is a lot of traffic flowing between the two cities. Therefore, in the interest of being the master of our own destiny, we wanted to operate the fibre ourselves instead and make sure we were able to control the network from one end to the other.”
Solution: Building an indigenous, self-maintained network
Having assessed the existing networks between Edinburgh and Glasgow, Commsworld found that these were all owned by big telecommunications companies from whom Commsworld would have to lease capacity from. Therefore, to achieve its goal of running a self-maintained network, it started looking at datacentres in Edinburgh and Glasgow from which it could build establish its own network connection.
Having already worked together for a number of years, Commsworld decided to purchase dark fibre and run it between Pulsant’s Edinburgh South Gyle data centre and a separate site in Glasgow to create a network that is 100% owned and controlled by themselves. This allowed the company to set the wheels in motion on creating the best-in-class network solution that its customers deserved.
Commsworld chose to work with Pulsant on this project due to the company’s strong focus on security and inherent understanding of its customers’ needs and requirements helped the project progress much more smoothly.
“Pulsant not only has some of the best connected and high quality facilities in the country, but it intimately understands how we, as a network provider, want to interface with a datacentre provider. As businesses we both understand each other, which allows requests to flow back and forth easily, there’s day-to-day support and maintenance, and it’s easy to make changes to various areas of the network when required — something that isn’t always so easy when working with other providers,” explains Charlie
Results: Excellent connectivity between Edinburgh and Glasgow
With its own network connection between Edinburgh and Glasgow now up and running, Commsworld and its customers in Scotland are able to notice significant improvements upon previous network solutions.
“By purchasing its own dark fibre and utilising Pulsant’s data centres to underpin its own core network, Commsworld has been able to dramatically upgrade its services both in terms of network reach and bandwidth speed,” says Chris Shields, regional sales director for Pulsant.
“It is now able to bypass the backlog of traffic that can typically be found when using networks owned by the big telecommunications companies, and can now provide its customers with fast, resilient and exclusive connectivity. “
“This also provides benefits for Pulsant customers, as they are able to have access to a large indigenous Scottish network that can connect their offices together, or they can connect their offices back to the Pulsant datacentre and the cloud infrastructure that sits there. This gives them fast, low latency access to high-performing cloud solutions.”
An unprecedented level of flexibility is another key benefit that certainly has not been taken for granted by Commsworld. “The benefit of owning the dark fibre that provides the connection between Edinburgh and Glasgow is that we can run it at whatever speed we want, and we can grow it as we need instead of having to engage a third-party every time we require more bandwidth,” says Charlie.
Results: A win-win partnership
“Pulsant has always been extremely thorough when it comes to putting proper procedures and processes in place that ensure individuals can’t access things inappropriately or change things without appropriate authorisation, and our customers have really noticed the difference this makes in terms of being able to confidently rely on the network connection at all times,” adds Charlie
As well as the factors of speed, flexibility, security and reliability, customers can also benefit from Commsworld’s long-running open relationship with Pulsant and the companies’ complementary services.
Going forward
Commsworld now has a presence in almost every Scottish Pulsant data centre, with connections in all three buildings at Pulsant’s South Gyle and Newbridge sites that offers the company diversity in the connections that it offers to customers. Moving forward, Commsworld has ambitions to expand its presence into the two new Pulsant datacentres in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and it will continue to work symbiotically with Pulsant to grow and expand its network reach.
