Phones 4u upgrades infrastructure with Logicalis

Logicalis has designed and implemented a core network for leading mobile phone retailer, Phones 4u. Replacing an ageing infrastructure, the new best-in-class network underpins customer-facing and back-office operations at Phones 4u and provides the agility to easily move and scale IT services to support continued business growth. Following the success of the project, Logicalis has been awarded the LAN contract at the retailer.

Phones 4u’s existing infrastructure was based on a flat network with no access switches or integration layer. Dave Robertson, head of IT services at the company, sought a partner to support the migration to a more agile infrastructure. He explains: “It’s fair to say we’d neglected our infrastructure and network in the past in favour of front-end platform and services. With our core switches reaching end of life, we were presented with the perfect opportunity to change that. This was a big project though, and so it wasn’t just about technology choices. During the tender, it was Logicalis’ people, implementation experience and depth of technical competency that really stood them apart.

“Working with Logicalis we’ve now seamlessly migrated all our services to a new infrastructure in which we have full visibility – because believe it or not, previously we didn’t know what was plugged in to our core switches or where – and one that makes it easy for us to add, move, scale and change services as we move forward.”

Logicalis designed and integrated a network based on Cisco technology including access, integration and core switches. Everything from Point-of-Sale across its 680 high-street stores, customer service and call centre applications, through to its CRM, Finance and HR systems were all migrated as part of the project. A seamless rollout was therefore critical, retaining uptime for business operations. Robertson comments: “Logicalis completed the infrastructure build with zero-downtime. The scale of the project was so large, and add to that the fact we didn't know what was plugged into what, it was layered with risk. However, Logicalis worked to ensure that we moved the servers without any impact on the business users. In fact, they didn't even know we were doing it!”

The retailer continues to expand at pace, opening 100 stores in 2012 alone and is on track for similar growth in 2013, as well as the continued extension of its online sales. The new network design has enabled Phones 4u to label and categorise all infrastructure components, which stands the company in good stead for introducing new services and moving servers on site orinto the cloud in future to support this expansion.

Robertson concludes, “Logicalis delivered on time, on budget and without any impact on our users. We were so impressed, we’ve now contracted them for the service to manage not only the new switches, but our entire LAN infrastructure. As Phones 4u continues to grow as a business, our IT infrastructure will play an ever-greater role as an enabler. We’ve developed a good relationship with Logicalis for future needs, and we look forward to building on their integration and service expertise.”