Manufacturing workflows are evolving at an unprecedented rate, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. The increasing effectiveness and affordability of 'smart' technologies and the Internet of Things means IT and OT are increasingly interconnected, with increasing volumes of data flowing between sites and devices on an ongoing basis.
2026 Hits
Like many fixtures of our lives, Britain's pubs were heavily impacted by COVID-19, with their familiar patrons unable to come in for a post-work drink, or meet with friends at the weekend. But while it was undoubtedly a difficult period for the industry as a whole, this great British institution did as it has always done, and adapted to suit its patrons' evolving requirements.
2671 Hits
Now more than ever, organisations across the public and private sectors depend on seamless, secure, and high-quality communications. Even with an increasing range of channels having established themselves in recent years - including voice, email, video, and SMS - voice services remain a key part of how we communicate and collaborate.
2318 Hits
From start-ups to global leaders, across the public and private sectors, organisations' ongoing growth and brand reputation rises or falls based on the quality of their networks. As a result, network transformation is a growing priority, with IT leaders looking to replace cumbersome legacy systems with flexible, scalable, and secure connections that support tomorrow's highly dynamic workflows.
2095 Hits
Whatever sector you operate in and whatever your long-term business goals, your network is the foundation of your future success. With the distributed workforce now firmly established and customer interactions taking place over an evolving range of channels, business is now truly interconnected, with seamless, secure dataflows its lifeblood.
1506 Hits
The security of enterprise networks is a critical priority for all organisations across the public and private sectors, as they are forced to contend with an increasingly turbulent cyber threat landscape. As a result, network teams increasingly find their roles overlap with their organisations' cyber security strategies, with numerous siloed elements now converging.
1312 Hits
Saving money with SD-WAN (part three)
Having debunked some of the myths surrounding SD-WAN’s money-saving properties in part one, and having provided some hypothetical examples of how it can actually save you money in part two, in the final part of this series I want to really ‘get real’ about SD-WAN.
Because once the hype has died down, and the ‘magical box’ myths are a distant memory, SD-WAN will still be there, generating tangible benefits for businesses across all industries and making them real money. A Google search will show you that SD-WAN is already a trend – there’s no getting ahead of that. But even though everybody’s talking about it, relatively few businesses are actually making the most of it. But some are – and here are three ways in which they’re doing it.
1. Economise while you globalise
For businesses, globalisation is a wellspring of opportunity, but it also creates new challenges. Many businesses have international offices that they need to connect-up - securely, reliably and cost effectively. And of course, it’s the cost effectiveness that often presents the biggest problem.
Why? Because security and reliability costs. Historically, those wishing to connect an international site or sites with full resilience have had to shell out for not one, but two international MPLS circuits (the second acting as a backup). Given the cost of international MPLS circuits, doing this isn’t exactly cheap.
Thanks to SD-WAN, though, businesses can now take a hybrid WAN approach to connecting international sites. This means using an international MPLS circuit backed up by an Internet circuit – and saving a pile of money in the process.
Before SD-WAN, running an MPLS circuit backed by an Internet circuit would have meant compromising your service. By cleverly using SD-WAN, however, we can now guarantee as good a service as an all-MPLS set-up, with as much resiliency, across a lower cost-based setup.
We do this by taking advantage of the application steering SD-WAN enables. This functionality allows us to put priority applications on the main MPLS circuit – thereby retaining the SLA and quality of service required – while mapping non-critical stuff onto an Internet line – thereby saving money.
2. Maximum security, minimum cost
With threat vectors multiplying as the Internet of Things emerges and businesses move more and more of their operations into the Cloud, cyber security has arguably never been so important to get right - or so challenging. And for businesses in possession of more than one office or site, there are obviously additional challenges; security can be extremely complex and expensive to set-up and maintain across multiple sites.
If you’ve got twenty offices, for example – that’s twenty physical firewalls that need to be installed and supported, with twenty different support contracts. And even once those firewalls are set up, if you want to roll out a new policy or software upgrade, that’s twenty separate upgrades you need to devote money and man-hours to. It’s making me tired just thinking about it! By the way, twenty offices might sound like a lot to some businesses, but could actually be quite a modest number by the standards of (for example) some retailers, some of whom have hundreds of sites to oversee and secure.
Transferring to a cloud-based security service will eliminate many of these headaches, and SD-WAN is arguably the best way to go about it. With SD-WAN, you get single-pane-of-glass visibility and control over your entire network, including all devices and endpoints (which SD-WAN networks authenticate with scalable key-exchange functionality and software-defined security). You’ll be able to roll out updates, configurations, patches and policies at the touch of a button, and - what’s more - you won’t even have to set-up physical firewalls in the first place!
3. An access all areas pass for businesses
For many businesses, there are times when sites need to be set up so quickly that connecting them up to the business’s main network isn’t an option. For construction and retail businesses, this is an increasingly familiar challenge: both routinely have to set up a porta-cabin site or pop-up store without access to fixed-line connectivity. In these situations, there’s unlikely to be space for hardware. Very likely there’s no IT staff on-site. It could also be a short-term implementation, making it difficult to install hardware in time to make it cost effective.
Once again, SD-WAN comes to the rescue! Because SD-WAN can be accessed through just about any access mechanism – from Ethernet to 4G data – you can use it to get up and running in no time at all. A retailer armed with SD-WAN can set up a pop-up shop and connect via 4G, and can switch to a more robust access point – at which time 4G becomes the backup as and when it becomes available.
Supplementing the savings in hardware costs will be the increased revenue businesses can expect to generate by eliminating delays in setting up. The agility SD-WAN’s flexibility gives to businesses also means they can set-up in a wider range of locations – and that equates to even more potential revenue.
The bottom line: the sky’s the limit
So there you have it – three examples of how businesses are proving that SD-WAN is more than just hype, and that the savings you can make using it are real and tangible. And these are only three examples, and this is only really the beginning. Ultimately, the control SD-WAN gives businesses over their network management means that the only limit to the ways in which it can save them money is the limit of network experts’ ingenuity.
Thanks for reading this blog series. We would love to hear your feedback on the blogs, any questions you might have, and any thoughts you yourself have on SD-WAN and its capacity to positively impact a business’s bottom line. Please leave comments below this blog or on social media, and let’s get the conversation started!
In the meantime, you can learn more about SD-WAN on our website
6152 Hits
Saving money with SD-WAN (part two)
"SD-WAN is an exciting, transformative technology that can do a lot of amazing things for your business – but it needs to be used correctly."
5847 Hits
Saving money with SD-WAN (part one)
Software Defined WAN, or SD-WAN for short, is the new big thing in business networking. Everybody's talking about SD-WAN, and about what it can do for businesses. Well, there's no doubt that SD-WAN can do a lot for your business; in fact, we'll be talking about exactly that in part 2 of this 3 part blog series. But before we do that, we need to talk about what SD-WAN can't do. Right now there's a popular misconception among businesses concerning SD-WAN - a misconception fed and sustained by headlines and marketing hype - that could lead them to take damaging shortcuts in incorporating SD-WAN into their business.
2159 Hits
Despite the numerous interconnected elements now involved in effective digital transformation, the network remains the foundation of everything, ensuring any investment in new technologies delivers the best possible ROI, and that teams at all levels are empowered to deliver their very best, 24 / 7. As such, the digital transformation journey must always begin with a full network transformation.
1444 Hits
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) represents an elegant convergence of network and security technologies as a single, end-to-end solution, perfectly suited to the modern distributed workforce and the increasingly dynamic nature of corporate networks. As a growing number of organisations are discovering, SASE has the potential to completely transform the way we design, deploy, manage, and scale corporate networks. Indeed, 60% of IT leaders are ready to fully embrace SASE by 2025*.
2264 Hits
New health secretary Matt Hancock has been beating the technology drum. As well as announcing that almost £500 million would be made available for technology, he's also asserted that the service needs more apps. However, it’s fair to wonder: is this the right avenue to funnel resources?
4570 Hits
About the Networked Fire Services Partnership (NFSP)
The Network Fire Services Partnership (NFSP) works to drive closer collaboration between fire & rescue services across Devon and Somerset, Dorset & Wiltshire, Hampshire & IOW, and Kent, operating out of four control rooms to maximise the effectiveness and availability of critical services across these regions.
The Challenge
With fire and emergency services, any downtime could cost lives, which means the quality of our underlying network and– in turn – the performance and availability of key platforms are top priorities for us.
Neil McKeever, NFSP Technical Lead
The NFSP utilises a Control and Dispatch (CAD) system to interlink its four control rooms, ensuring seamless, secure flows of data in order to maximise ease of communication and, in turn, deployment times. This system is constantly evolving to better serve citizens across the country and – ultimately – save lives.
In order to optimise the performance of the newest iteration of the CAD platform, a decision was made to split off the NFSP's underling network, utilising the existing network for day-to-day operations, while deploying a new, fully dedicated network for CAD applications.
Following a competitive tender process, the Exponential-e Group's 20-year pedigree in the design and delivery of critical infrastructure,
their experts' personal experience within a range of emergency services, and the inherent resilience of their self-owned, enterprise-class network made them a clear standout, and so they were selected as the NFSP's new networking partner, providing RO2 connectivity between the NFSP's control rooms, back-up control rooms, and the NEC data centres in which the new iteration of their CAD platform would be hosted.
Exponential-e's specialists immediately began working closely with the NFSP's own teams to establish the new network specifications and plan for a successful rollout of the new platform, while also preparing for the impending launch of the new Emergency Services Network (ESN).
The Solution
Thanks to Exponential-e's continued support, we're now in a good position for the upcoming launch of the ESN, which will open the door to further enhancements in the future.
Neil McKeever, NFSP Technical Lead
It was decided that the existing network would remain in place throughout the deployment of the new one, with the current CAD platform continuing to run on it. This would not only ensure any downtime could be completely avoided – an absolute necessity for a project of this nature – but also allow for a more intelligent, phased deployment process for the new platform, with ample scope to sandboxing, testing, and in-built redundancy until it was ready for a full-scale deployment, with the legacy platform phased out completely.
A dedicated account team took full responsibility for the design and the delivery of this new network, working with existing infrastructure where appropriate, and deploying completely new fibre where it was required. The project plan was designed so the NFSP could begin making use of individual connections as soon as they became available, in parallel with ongoing testing and deployment processes, ensuring the desired benefits could be realised as soon as possible.
This involved the most rigorous standards of performance and availability, in order to support real-time communications between the NFSP's control rooms, their colleagues, and all citizens who would need to make contact for any reason. Exponential-e's role in the Government's ESN project is critical here, ensuring the NFSP will be able to begin making use of this UK-wide network's capabilities as soon as it launches, further enhancing communication, collaboration, and responsiveness for frontline emergency service workers across the country.
Exponential-e are set to continue working with the NFSP in the years ahead, ensuring the underlying network continues to support the seamless delivery of fire and emergency services, maximising the number of lives saved.
Solution Benefits
- Highly resilient, highly secure R02 connectivity between four control rooms, their back-ups, and NEC data environments, optimising the performance and availability of a key control and command platform
- Hands-on consultation and support from a dedicated team of networking experts with years of hands-on experience across the emergency services
- A phased deployment process, managed by a dedicated account team, minimising operational disruption and maximising time-to-value
- Hands-on support from the only privately-owned British company involved in the UK Government's ESN project
287 Hits
High-performance connectivity and seamless Cloud migration delivers the foundation for world-class legal services.
About TWM Solicitors
Originally established in 1799, TWM Solicitors is one of the South-East's leading law firms, with more than 220 employees based across Surrey and London offering an end-to-end range of legal services.
The Challenge
With staff operating out of multiple dispersed offices, TWM required high-performance connectivity between all sites, enabling seamless, highly secure collaboration between teams. Dissatisfied with the quality delivered by their incumbent provider, TWM's IT team engaged Exponential-e as their new connectivity partner, beginning with a complete revamp of the WAN.
The Solution
To achieve a smooth transition to the new network, with zero operational disruption, Exponential-e and TWM deployed a 'shadow' WAN that would ensure connections would remain available to all staff while the migration was completed over the course of six weeks. A key priority for the new network was achieving complete consistency for all offices - a significant challenge given the diverse nature of TWM's premises, which ranged from modern offices to a Victorian building and a sixteenth-century farmhouse. Close collaboration between teams at Exponential-e and TWM, combined with rigorous testing of the new infrastructure before the go-live date, ensured this was achieved across all sites, delivering an immediate return on the initial investment.
The close partnership established throughout this initial deployment was developed further when Exponential-e took over the management of the network's switches, allowing TWM's own IT team to refocus their attention on other business-critical projects.
The partnership entered its second stage when TWM made the decision to migrate from its legacy ISDN-based telephony to a Cloud-based platform, for which Exponential-e provided the foundation in the form of a dedicated VLAN, with its own gateway and firewall, which involved segmenting the existing network and switches, ensuring that that TWM's familiar quality of service would not be compromised.
With the new network infrastructure now established as the foundation, the decision was made to streamline and optimise TWM's VDI environment by migrating to Azure Virtual Desktop, minimising any jitter and ensuring staff at all their offices would enjoy a consistently seamless experience, particularly when accessing the Practice Management System (PMS). Beyond the immediate improvements in terms of performance and availability, this would serve as the foundation for a phased migration from on-premises servers to highly scalable, Cloud-based infrastructure.
These migrations were conducted on a site-by-site basis, with Exponential-e providing hands-on support throughout, ensuring all staff were properly trained in the new systems and able to make full use of their capabilities as quickly as possible. This included roundtable functions around Cloud transformation and cyber security, along with access to pre-sales personnel's specialist knowledge.
Teams from TWM and Exponential-e continue to work closely together in this regard, migrating more legacy on-premises systems into the Cloud, with the end goal being a completely centralised infrastructure that will provide the IT team with full control and visibility at all times, ensuring any potential issues can be proactively identified and resolved, and new teams and offices effortlessly onboarded.
Beyond the quality of the underlying connections, the success of this project has really hinged on the team at Exponential-e's willingness to work closely with us throughout the design of the new infrastructure, and throughout every stage of its deployment. We've got a strong foundation to build on now, and the next phases are already yielding good things.
Alan Barrett, Head of IT, TWM Solicitors.
Solution Benefits
- A seamless migration to a new, high-performance WAN, delivering consistent networking quality across a range of diverse sites.
- High-quality, Cloud-based telephony, powered by a dedicated VLAN, optimising cross-site communication and collaboration.
- Providing the interconnection between Exponential-e's WAN and Azure through an ExpressRoute link, supporting Cloud migration objectives.
- An intelligent, phased migration process, avoiding any disruption while maintaining the highest standards of security and compliance.
- Expert support and consultation from a dedicated account team and a range of technical specialists.
292 Hits
Establishing IT as a true driver for innovation across the UK's Construction Sector
About Knight Harwood
Knight Harwood is a trusted provider of construction and engineering expertise to a wide range of leading brands and organisations across the UK, with a particular focus on London and the Home Counties. Projects range from new build to heavy and structural refurbishments and fit out, with a highly collaborative, proactive approach ensuring the highest levels of quality, from design to completion.
"What sets Exponential-e apart is that we can really tailor the way services are delivered and expedite the whole process, should the need arise. We've got a solution that really works for us, and – most importantly – I know I can email Nelly with anything, and she'll be right on it."
Rob Symmons, Head of IT, Knight Harwood
The Challenge
Construction projects, by their very nature, require an agile approach to IT, due to the highly varied nature of the sites and the stringent timeframes that must be adhered to. Sites often require connectivity to deployed at just a few days' notice, which means the sector's technology partners must be able to operate with the highest levels of flexibility and agility, working closely with organisations' own IT teams to ensure project requirements are consistently communicated, understood, and properly executed.
To fulfil these singular requirements, Knight Harwood engaged Exponential-e as their trusted technology partner, providing both fibre connectivity and key software licenses.
The Solution
A dedicated account manager serves as Knight Harwood's primary point of contact at Exponential-e, ensuring all projects can be initiated and completed within the designated timelines. To offer further support around project delivery, Knight Harwood's team have direct access to multiple specialists across Exponential-e - including several at director level - who are on-hand whenever needed.
A key focus is providing the foundational connectivity to new sites, working closely with Knight Harwood's own teams to ensure that project specifications have been understood and acted upon, and all targets and deadlines achieved. This includes establishing how the underlying infrastructure will be managed, and how it is expected to be developed in the future.
Exponential-e's ongoing deployment of fibre under the streets of London has proven critical to the success of numerous construction projects around the city centre, with the ideal connectivity readily available well in advance of the desired opening day. This responsiveness has been further enhanced by Exponential-e's contractual flexibility and ability to conduct site surveys with as little as forty-eight hours' notice, ensuring the required connections can be made as soon as possible.
The hands-on support of their account manager has massively streamlined Knight Harwood's deployment processes for each project, complementing the highly flexible, agile nature of their work on some of the UK's most innovative construction projects.
Exponential-e also provides multiple key software licences for Knight Harwood's teams, including Fortinet and Mimecast, as a fully managed service, enhancing the flexibility and scalability of their IT ecosystem, and ensuring they continue to enjoy highly competitive pricing for these platforms.
This partnership continues to evolve further with each project, with Exponential-e operating as an extension of Knight Harwood's own team, optimising their agility and ensuring they can always focus their time and resources on areas where they can add the most value to each project.
Solution Benefits
- Hands-on support throughout every stage of project delivery, with a dedicated account manager serving as a single point of contact.
- A highly flexible, agile approach to project delivery, allowing high-performance connectivity to be deployed within the tightest deadlines.
- Highly competitive pricing for multiple key software licences, delivered as a fully managed service.
- A bespoke approach to each deployment, ensuring the most specific requirements can always been fulfilled on time and to budget.
"Knight Harwood's IT department operates as a lean team, but working with Exponential-e, we've shown that things can be done differently, and IT can be a real asset to the company. Now, it's focused on transformation rather than just resolving problems, driving efficiency across the board and enhancing our staff's capabilities."
Rob Symmons, Head of IT, Knight Harwood
42 Hits
© 2025 Exponential-e Ltd. Reg. No. 04499567, Reg. Address:100 Leman Street, London E1 8EU