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2005

MPLS Wide Area Network to provide backbone for Agents to produce own property pages

THUS plc today announced it is providing a resilient MPLS Wide Area Network (WAN) to the Archant community media group to support its online property advertising service.  As one of the UK’s leading independent media groups, active in the fields of regional newspaper and magazine publishing, as well as Internet communications, Archant selected THUS to roll out an MPLS infrastructure that connects a number of remote sites onto a single Internet point. This infrastructure will provide a new online interface for Estate Agents to enter property instructions directly into Archant’s property databases. Once the instructions are entered, then the Agent can construct their own page ready for insertion in the newspaper.

The mission-critical nature of Archant’s advertising venture demanded a resilient network capable of meeting the high quality of service expectations of end users, a determining factor in choosing THUS to deploy its MPLS network.  Estate Agents manage their own information over the Internet and then select the properties to appear in the next edition. Speed and reliability are essential ingredients to ensure that the user experience is maintained and Archant has a unique selling point.

“Property advertising is an important source of revenue for regional publishers, so the performance of the new online service is of vital importance to our business.  Network downtime will impact this service immediately and a bad experience will not only discourage Estate Agents but will also jeopardise the production of our newspapers,” said Keith Lee, Regional IS Manager, Archant IS.  “We chose THUS because it demonstrated a clear understanding of the media industry and could supply the assured network resilience to support the move online.”

The any to any MPLS network links the eight Archant sites, Archant Herts, Archant Suffolk, Archant Anglia, two sites in Archant London to a managed, secure, centralised Internet distribution point at one of THUS’s enterprise class collocation facilities. A fully managed firewall hosted at the site will provide security to the overall network, alongside the inbuilt security of carrying data over the private network.

Archant’s changing technological requirements formed an additional part of the decision making process. It required a solution that would integrate seamlessly with the existing network infrastructure and be a part of the publisher’s long term network strategy.  THUS’s MPLS network is convergence ready and will enable Archant to upgrade to VoIP, multicasting and multiple applications over a single platform in the future.

“The scalability and flexibility offered by THUS’s network was a key factor in our decision to go with its solution, meaning we can future-proof the network to respond to new business demands or deploy new applications,” said Keith Lee.

“We have built a very solid reputation in servicing the needs of the media sector, experience built on providing innovative tailored solutions to a number of large media companies,” said Phil Male, Chief Operating Officer, THUS plc.  “Archant is a great win for us, further endorsing our capabilities of providing technologically advanced converged solutions for customers in mission critical environments.”

This announcement follows THUS’s recent multi-million pound contract win with Johnston Press, one of the UK’s top five regional newspaper and Internet publishers.