UK – September 12th, 2013 – Ecl-ips, a highly respected specialist in environmental and security threat management solutions has announced details of a successful project with JLT Group that has upgraded its diverse and difficult to manage UPS and monitoring systems to a Schneider / APC centric platform with complete power, environmental and security monitoring. JLT Group is an international group of Risk Specialists and Employee Benefits Consultants and one of the largest of its type in the world. JLT has around 7,600 employees based at over 100 offices in 33 countries including 40 sites in the UK. For many years, JLT has grown through acquisition adding new offices and a diverse range of IT equipment within comms rooms across the UK and overseas. For Ritchie Coombs, Technical Services Manager at JLT Group and his small team, these standalone sites presented a management challenge. The sites are spread across the length of the UK, many without local IT staff and often in managed offices, and need to be maintained to ensure reliable IT and communication infrastructure. Issues such as power supply outages, air conditioning failures resulting in high temperature related equipment failures were difficult to quickly spot and rectify. Even at sites protected by UPS, it was difficult to ensure the reliability of batteries with little service histories and infrequent failover testing. To resolve this situation and with JLT still growing, Coombs decided on a multiyear programme to upgrade and centralise both power protection and environmental monitoring to create a reliable and cost effective platform to manage all sites under a centralised system. Following an evaluation of several potential technologies and suppliers, Coombs selected Ecl-ips based on its expertise across datacentre, environmental and security monitoring. “We had worked with Ecl-ips on earlier projects and they had always delivered professional and technical astute solutions,” explains the technical services manager, “They also had the capability to provide 24 hour remote and next day-on site engineer response which is critical in meeting our service delivery requirements.” As an APC Elite Partner for Business Networks, Ecl-ips has full access and extensive experience in deploying data centre solutions and recommended a combination of Smart-UPS, NetBotz visual security and environmental monitoring plus various smart PDU’s all controlled through a StruxtureWare management platform hosted within the Ecl-ips data centre suite. The Ecl-ips Hosted-StruxtureWare Data Centre Expert solution allows both the JLT facilities team and its own help desk to monitor equipment at comms rooms across the UK and overseas. The multi-vendor solution provides real-time monitoring across power, cooling, security and offers instant fault notification and escalation to enable quick assessment and resolution of critical infrastructure events that can adversely affect IT system availability. Working closely with Ecl-ips, JLT group created a schedule of site upgrades and failover tests to bring all sites into the new solution. This process included an audit of each site and tests of any existing UPS and monitoring equipment as well as integration with access control systems. At certain sites, Ecl-ips installed NetBotz monitoring equipment which also includes CCTV capability to ensure the security of vulnerable comms rooms, particularly at shared sites. The upgrade project has gone to plan and with 20 sites completed; Coombs and his team is already benefiting from the new unified management platform, “We have more visibility over the power and environmental conditions at each site and with the addition of video, we are instantly alerted if somebody has gone into a comms room without permission as well as full audit trail of any changes.” “All alerts are also routed to our mobile devices, which allows us to have a lighter touch, smaller and more mobile team that can remotely carry out many of the common remedies such as power cycling without a time consuming site visit,” Coombs adds. The JLT facilities team and Ecl-ips also has the ability to schedule battery replacements and to conduct regular maintenance activities through StruxtureWare which provides detailed reporting to allow for preventative maintenance through trending data that can highlight potential issues. “Ecl-ips has delivered a first class service,” adds Coombs, “In the rare instance when we have had a failure, an engineer has been on site first thing next morning and resolved the issue without fuss and that level of professionalism is definitely appreciated.” JLT Group is nearly halfway through its upgrade and Coombs believes that the switch has led to higher reliability across its IT infrastructure and helped the team to better secure critical comms rooms. “It’s hard to put a figure on the value of the project to JLT but it’s fair to say that IT is critical to the Group and the move to a unified power and monitoring platform has helped us to minimise risk and respond more quickly to any issues,” Coombs concludes.

JLT Group

Anglesey Primary School is a popular Local Authority school just outside the centre of the City of Birmingham and has over 760 pupils aged 4 – 11. The school values the contribution that each of its pupils brings and encourages them to develop as individuals within a strong community. It offers a broad, balanced curriculum delivered by a dedicated staff team who use innovative ideas to inspire the children’s learning. Like many schools, Anglesey has grown over time and has a mixture of buildings on two sites that include Victorian buildings and 1970s additions. The school had two separate analogue CCTV camera systems, each with around a dozen cameras, but they did not provide the coverage needed to ensure the safety of its pupils, staff and visitors. Furthermore, because footage from the cameras could only be stored for a couple of days, it was of limited use. Anglesey’s IT Manager Alex Bradley was tasked with sourcing a suitable alternative. Research told him that digital CCTV cameras could provide the solution the school needed. Having established this, he asked three companies to tender for the contract to install and maintain the cameras. Alex reports that Ecl-ips was the only company of the three invited to tender to offer a free trial of the cameras and it was a service the school valued. “It made it really easy to see how useful the new equipment would be and how it would integrate with current systems,” Alex says. It was a key factor in the school’s decision to award the contract to Ecl-ips, but it was far from the only reason. Alex explains, “The Ecl-ips price was very competitive, but more importantly than that, they were very supportive throughout the quoting process and we just got the sense they were experts in their field and were people we could trust.” Ecl-ips recommended that Anglesey Primary School used Avigilon hardware, backed up with an Uninterruptable Power Supply System to guarantee coverage even during a power cut. Avigilon is renowned for designing and manufacturing the world’s best high definition surveillance systems. Its megapixel cameras, recording hardware and video management software combine to create an end-to-end solution that delivers an image quality that is unmatched by any of its competitors. The equipment can also be integrated with existing analogue systems extremely cost-effectively, something that was particularly valuable for Anglesey because it meant they could continue to use the cameras they already had installed. Backed up with the reassurance of an Uninterruptable Power Supply System, it was a package that gave Anglesey everything it needed to ensure the safety of its staff and pupils. The process of installing the CCTV equipment went very smoothly and Ecl-ips’s understanding of the particular requirements and constraints of school life was something that impressed Alex. He says, “All the cabling was installed during the school holidays so it didn’t cause any disruption to staff or pupils. The final parts of the installation happened during term time, but the Ecl-ips team worked very sensitively and the work didn’t affect the school day at all.” The Anglesey team are delighted with the new cameras. “They have made a big difference,” Alex says. “The new equipment is much easier to use – it takes us two minutes to find something rather than two hours. We can also store images for a lot longer, which makes life much easier and gives us an extra level of reassurance. But above all, we’ve got so much more coverage than we had before and we’ve made the school a much safer place to be for staff and pupils alike.” There have been very few technical queries so far, but Alex has been impressed with the way Ecl-ips has dealt with anything that has come up. “Everything has worked extremely well so far. We have had a couple of early problems with the software but Ecl-ips team have been very quick to investigate and fix the issues,” he says. In conclusion, Alex says, “It was a pleasure to work with Ecl-ips. They did the job we asked them to do and they did it well. That’s all you can ask for really.”

Anglesey Primary School