SCALABLE COMMUNICATIONS UPGRADES LOCAL AREA NETWORK FOR LEGAL 500 LAW FIRM

12th October 2009 - Scalable Communications, the leading independent provider of secure, best of breed converged solutions, won the tendering process to replace Morgan Cole’s Local Area Network (LAN) switches in all of its offices.

Morgan Cole was formed by the merger of Morgan Bruce and Cole & Cole in 1998 and is a UK based Law Firm offering legal services from six offices based in Wales and Southern England.  The Firm’s areas of business include, but are not limited to banking and finance, commercial law, commercial property, corporate law, dispute management, education, employment law, insurance, intellectual property and information technology.  With 600 users across its offices, Morgan Cole is a dynamic organisation, investing in exceptional people and the latest technology to help them achieve their objectives and those of their clients.

Scalable Communications first became aware of Morgan Cole’s LAN upgrade project in November 2008 when they released a ‘Request for Proposal’ document.  With vast experience within the legal sector - with customers such as Stephenson Harwood, Cripps Harries Hall LLP and Charles Russell Solicitors to name a few - Scalable Communications firmly believed that they were in a unique position through their skills, experience and focus to supply Morgan Cole with a compliant, feature rich and resilient solution.

Morgan Cole required a high performance network that was robust and resilient enough to maintain their immediate business critical applications, but also those planned for the future.

Scalable Communications put forward a proposal which recommended Morgan Cole replace all of the existing 3Com kit with Extreme Networks’ Black Diamond switches at the core and a selection of Extreme’s Summit family at the edge.  This solution would provide Morgan Cole with a resilient, high performance network solution to support business critical applications and provide a solid foundation to support future applications such as IP Telephony.

With Cisco and Huawei also bidding for the project, Morgan Cole awarded Scalable Communications with the contract in January 2009. Morgan Cole felt with Extreme Networks’ focus on performance, resiliency and lower cost of ownership and Scalable Communications experience in the legal sector, they presented the best solution to fit their business needs.

Catherine Baker, Infrastructure Delivery Manager of Morgan Cole commented "The written response to the tender was excellent (scoring nearly full marks) and subsequent presentation to the technical teams and IT Director was informative.
Scalable Communications were selected on the basis of the written response, the presentation and suggested improvements to the design and configuration.”

Matt Cross, Sales Consultant for Scalable Communications said, “In providing Morgan Cole with an Extreme Networks solution, we are confident that our solution will deliver a continuous high performance network to supports its business critical applications, whilst providing a solid solution that is future-proof.”

The network design and customer requirements changed over time, however Scalable Communications were able to design, build and provide a solution based on two Extreme Network Black Diamond switches for the core network at Cardiff data centre whilst the remote sites were equipped with X450’s at the core and X250s at the edge across all six sites. The network was deployed to support a host of applications including video, data, and voice.  This provided a more cost effective, future proof solution whilst providing maximum resiliency.

“The implementation was well organised by the Scalable Project Manager and the whole project team responded to last minute issues and changes of plan with great flexibility and efficiency” said Catherine Baker, Infrastructure Delivery Manager of Morgan Cole, “of particular note was Scalable’s on-site engineer.  His approach was methodical and thorough which meant the implementation went without a hitch.  It was a pleasure to work with him. I would certainly consider Scalable favourably for any other projects they could assist us with”

 About Morgan Cole

Morgan Cole is a UK law firm committed to providing the highest quality legal services and commercially focused advice from offices in South Wales and southern England.
A dynamic organisation who are proactive in supporting their client with valuable advice and information and provide a high degree of partner involvement, giving the client a confident and highly-experienced decision-maker on its team. What is particularly striking about Morgan Cole is their down-to-earth attitude. They are realistic people who listen to its clients and understand the need to work to deadlines and within budgets.
Informed, specialist advice is key to their approach, which means that they focus on building relationships with its clients and gaining a real understanding of their organisations. Clients also benefit from having access to a wide variety of resources and skills as their lawyers work cross-office according to client needs.

About Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks provides converged Ethernet networks that support data, voice and video for enterprises and service providers. The company’s network solutions feature high performance and high availability switching that deliver insight and control enabling customers to solve their real-world business communications challenges.  Operating in more than 50 countries, Extreme Networks provides wired and wireless secure LANs, data center infrastructure and Service Provider Ethernet transport solutions that are complemented by a global, 24x7 service and support.  For more information, visit: http://www.extremenetworks.com

About Scalable Communications Plc
Scalable Communications is a leading independent provider of business communications solutions, enabling customers to increase productivity and reduce operational costs, by exploiting latest communications technologies and consolidating suppliers and bills.

Started in 1997, Scalable Communications has over ten years of strong performance and consistent organic growth from medium and large sized customers from both the private and public sector, including names such as B&Q, Royal Society of Medicine and Cambridgeshire County Council.  With a customer retention rate of over 96%, Scalable Communications can be relied upon to transform an organisations’ business communications.

For more information please contact
Karen Tipping 
Scalable Communications PLC
Tel: 0844 7422010
Email: Karen.tipping@splc.co.uk