Exponential-e transforms Viridian Housing’s ICT infrastructure

Exponential-e has completed a project to transform Viridian Housing’s ICT network, moving its data centre and service infrastructure to a cloud-based model.

Viridian, a UK social housing association which supports over 30,000 residents in England, chose Exponential-e to undertake the project following a rigorous procurement process. The move to the cloud will provide Viridian’s 850 employees with a more flexible working environment and shift its ICT costs to a more efficient pay-by-usage model.

Viridian’s cloud access is supported by Exponential-e’s national 100 Gigabit Ethernet core, Layer 2 VPLS network. A robust network link from the data centre connects Viridian’s London headquarters with its regional offices in the Midlands and West Sussex. This high capacity network is critical to ensuring solid access to Viridian’s cloud-based services, which manage everything from customer enquiries and payment, to supplier and contractor coordination.

Alongside supporting critical cloud access, Exponential-e has also installed an end-to-end management service that oversees Viridian’s critical systems including the Virtual Data Centre and Disaster Recovery. This guarantees that Viridian’s critical data is constantly backed up and can provide it with rapid access to any necessary information in the case of an unexpected outage.

“Exponential-e is proud to be part of Viridian’s journey to becoming a more digital organisation,” commented Mukesh Bavisi, Managing Director, Exponential-e. “As businesses look to reduce expenditure and adopt more flexible working practices, organisations such as Viridian can hugely benefit from moving to a cloud-based model. Rather than investing in bespoke, internal ICT infrastructure that is difficult and expensive to expand or adapt, Viridian can now access services on a pay-per-use basis. For example, it could pay for additional cloud storage to manage a peak in activity during a particular month and then return to a lower level when demand lessens. By paying for services only as needed, Viridian can ensure that costs are controlled and residents’ service experience is maintained. This approach ensures that Viridian remains agile and responsive.”

Phil Copperwheat, Head of Systems at Viridian concluded: “We needed to more closely align IT costs to the business size and shape. This need informed our decision to move to a more flexible, cloud-based service model. Exponential-e’s solution has been critical to enabling us to deploy the right technologies to meet our business goals. While moving to the cloud heralds great benefits for us, we also needed a partner who could ensure serious network reliability in order for our residents to experience no disruption when accessing the services they depend upon. Exponential-e was the perfect choice for this, having already proven themselves as a trusted partner in the past.”