Resilient Networks and BT partner at British APCO 2012
London, April, 2012: BT and Resilient Networks have joined forces at this year's British APCO 2012 to discuss the topic of resilient call handling across emergency services. The emergency services is one group where the need to ensure that all calls get answered is nothing less than paramount – a matter of life and death for some.
In this article, which appeared in April's print issue of the BAPCO Journal, our CEO, Andrew Bale, references the recent work Resilient Networks has completed around combining the control rooms for Cambridgeshire and Suffolk fire services. He also looks at how upgrading to a digital platform, opened up the possibility for the emergency services using a voice-continuity service that enables virtually instant call re-routing in the cloud – making the combined fire service not only more efficient but also more cost effective.
Direct Connect is shortlisted for a Business Continuity Award
London, April, 2012: We are pleased to announce that smartnumbers Direct Connect has been shortlisted for a CIR Magazine Business Continuity Award under the Most Innovative Solution of the Year category.
The fourteenth annual Business Continuity Awards recognises those business continuity, security, resilience and risk professionals whose innovative strategies and industry savvy make them stand out above the rest
"Making the shortlist for Most Innovative Solution is a great achievement and pays testament to the hard work and dedication of the team at Resilient Networks,” comments Andrew Bale. “We continue to receive positive feedback from customers who are seeing the benefits of Direct Connect in delivering enterprise-wide business continuity for inbound voice."
Judged by an independent panel of experts for exceptional performance, service and results in this dynamic industry, the winners in this year’s 20 categories will be honoured and awarded at a gala dinner and ceremony on Wednesday 30th May 2012 – an evening that brings together industry leaders for a night of networking and celebration.
Reducing the Olympic risk
London, March, 2012: With the Olympics just around the corner, there’s a renewed focus on business continuity planning – and it’s no wonder. The sheer number of expected visitors, from as many as 205 nations, will place an immense amount of added of stress on both the physical and virtual infrastructure in the country. As such, businesses fast need to plan how to overcome the challenges the Games may present.
Speaking with clients and contacts in the industry, we know that many CIOs are in full planning mode around how to ensure business continuity during this period. And in answer to their questions about how to overcome some of the key challenges our CEO, Andrew Bale, shares his top tips with the readers of
The Risk Universe on how businesses can reduce the risk of impact to their voice solution, specifically with regards to inbound calls, and how they’ll come out resilient at the other end – even beyond the Olympics.
Resilient Networks proudly supports Army sports
Voice services provider sponsors Royal Signals sports
London, February, 2012: Voice services provider Resilient Networks plc has proudly confirmed its sponsorship of Army sports through its agreement with Team Army, the not-for-profit organisation that raises funds for Army sports and Service charities.
Resilient Networks will become the headline sponsor of the Royal Corps of Signals and a sponsor of the Army Winter Sports Association. In the British Army, the Royal Corps of Signals are the leaders in Information Technology and Communications (ICT). Resilient Networks, which through its partner BT, supplies cloud-based resilient voice solutions to the MoD and other Government bodies, is therefore a natural sponsor.
Andrew Bale, CEO at Resilient Networks said: "As a long standing provider of voice communications services to the Army and MoD we are delighted to be given the opportunity to support Army sports. Our sponsorship of the Royal Corps of Signals was a logical step given our relationship with the communications teams within the Army. Building a closer relationship with the Corps will help us better understand and serve their communication needs and those of the other Services they themselves serve."
Brigadier Steve Vickery, The Royal Corps of Signals, added, "I am really delighted by the joint initiative between the Corps and Resilient Networks plc. In my role as the Chairman of the Corps Games Club and Vice Chairman of the Royal Signals Institution, I hope that we can forge an enduring parnership with Resilient Networks over the coming years. The injection of financial support will further enhance the profile of Corps sport and athletic events."
Major General Lamont Kirkland CBE, Team Army CEO, concluded, "Communication and team work is an essential part of ensuring the success of the Armed forces. Encouraging participation in sport is another way for the Army to develop these characteristics and therefore operational effectiveness. Resilient Networks’ sponsorship of Army sport through Team Army is a very natural fit especially for the Royal Corps of Signals. I hope this is the beginning of a long-term and fruitful relationship."
Resilient Networks supports BT at the North Wales Local Resilience Forum
London, February, 2012 Voice services provider Resilient Networks plc attended the North Wales Local Resilience Forum (LRF) in support of telecoms provider BT. The event, which took place on Thursday 19th January at the BT National Customer Experience Management Centre at Oswestry, saw members discussing how the BT smartnumbers services aid compliance with the Civil Contingencies act and enable greater levels of resilience for voice.
Members of the North Wales LRF in attendance included, North Wales Police, Denbighshire County Council, Gwynedd Council, the Red Cross, the EA and Wrexham County Borough Council. The North Walers LRF has regular meetings to ensure that they are fully able to coordinate multi agency responses and respond effectively to business continuity events.
During the meeting in January Tony Watson, VP of Government Sales at Resilient Networks delivered a speech on the importance of voice continuity, and covered how the BT smartnumbers service can mitigate against the many unpredictable challenges business continuity practitioners are faced with. Resilient Networks is a key technology supplier to BT and jointly the companies deliver the BT smartnumbers service, which enables voice resilience on a cloud platform.
Tony Watson, commented: "For organisations such as the North Wales LRF communication is a vital to ensure that all the various agency’s business continuity plans support each other and that business as usual is maintained at all times. A vital, but often overlooked part of these continuity plans is voice. However, by employing BT smartnumbers organisations can ensure that all stakeholders can reach the right person at the right time- even during unforeseen events."
Phil Harrison, chair of the North Wales TSG commented, "We were interested to hear how the BT smartnumbers services aid compliance with the Civil Contingencies act and also provide greater levels of resilience for voice, than have been available before. It was useful to hear how the services have been deployed in emergency control room environments and how other organisations are using smartnumbers to also deliver additional operation benefits; such as property rationalisation."
NHS Hampshire and Southern Diabetes Medical Services gets smart
with Orange smartnumbers
New service ensures immediate access to clinical specialists to provide enhanced care for diabetes patients.
London, 24 January, 2012 Resilient Networks today announced that Southern Diabetes Medical Services, in conjunction with NHS Hampshire has rolled-out Orange smartnumbers. The service, delivered in partnership with Orange, provides GPs and Practice Nurses from 51 surgeries across Hampshire with access to specialist support from dedicated diabetes consultants.
With 15,000 diabetic patients across NHS Hampshire, delivery of specialist clinical advice was identified as an area of priority. Orange smartnumbers gives callers instant access to the best placed diabetes expert available; providing GPs and other healthcare workers with the ability to reach an expert, first time, and every time they call. Previously, there was no guaranteed access to specialist diabetic support.
The Orange smartnumbers service provides healthcare professionals with specialist assistance and guidance in the management of a patient’s diabetes care. This will result in improved patient care, whilst at the same time reducing costly referrals and unnecessary appointments with consultants. The smartnumbers service delivers calls to a team of specialists based on availability and regardless of their location. If a specialist is not available a voicemail is captured and a record of this is then emailed and texted to the team.
Kate Jack, Head of Public Sector and Health at Orange, said, "We are all too aware of the strains currently being placed on the healthcare sector. With expectations across the NHS to lower costs and referrals to secondary care, the sector is under a significant amount of pressure. Orange smartnumbers offers a real solution to both of these requirements. It not only ensures that patients with a real need for specialist care or advice can be dealt with more quickly, but also helps to reduce cost and administration time otherwise incurred through unnecessary referrals."
Dr Partha Kar, Clinical Director Endocrinology/Diabetes at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and Partner, Southern Diabetes Medical Services, said, "In the UK, 4.45 per cent of the population are currently affected by diabetes. Managing the illness is important, and for many, this involves regular doctor appointments. With Orange smartnumbers such care is enhanced through greater levels of access to diabetes specialists as and when required.
Primary care are doing a phenomenal job in spite of the odds and any service designed to give them quicker and easier access rather than costly follow-up appointments with consultants has to be a step in the right direction. Not all patients with diabetes need to be necessarily seen by a consultant and an advisory service, in certain cases, may indeed be more appropriate. The availability of immediate advice has started to reduce referrals and speeded up patient care. So far, we have seen an extremely positive response and hope to extend the principle wider across NHS Hampshire and surrounding Trusts in the near future. We hope this will improve the delivery of care to the 15,000 diabetic patients living in the county."
Enterprise IT decision makers lack confidence in business continuity ahead of London 2012
London, 10th January 2012 The ability of organisations in the UK to maintain 'business as usual' during London 2012 is in serious doubt, with three out of four IT decision makers admitting that they lack total confidence that their continuity plans will be effective during the Olympics.
A study, carried out on behalf of Resilient Networks, shows that 97 per cent of businesses believe they could not maintain 'business as usual' if telecommunications were lost – a third felt it would in fact be business destroying – and yet the research reveals that voice continuity is the main vulnerability within the contingency planning and remote working initiatives of UK plc.
The Resilient Networks study, entitled "Preparing your business for the Olympics: ensuring voice continuity" and carried out by Vanson Bourne and OnePoll, examines current business continuity strategies ahead of London 2012 and analyses how prepared businesses are to handle incoming calls during the anticipated widespread disruption of London 2012.
Despite an overwhelming response that the loss of telecommunications is incredibly damaging to operational effectiveness, the research reveals an alarming disconnect with the plans actually in place to protect voice continuity. Nearly half (47 per cent) of IT decision makers believe that their employees are able divert calls when they are away from or denied access to their normal place of work. However, contrary to this, 75 per cent of employees in London do not believe this to be the case; in fact only 15 per cent believe they have the ability to divert incoming calls themselves remotely. In addition to this half of all business continuity plans do not even cover inbound call handing for when staff can't get to the office.
In terms of the level of disruption expected, the research revealed that 57 per cent of businesses believe travel disruptions in the capital will have the biggest impact on operational efficiency and over half of London based workers who were surveyed said they also anticipate delays and will be unable to travel due to public transport, resulting in home working or irregular hours. While a quarter of businesses expect staff to call in sick during the Games, only three per cent of staff admit this will be the case.
"An alarming percentage of businesses risk losing contact with their customers, partners, suppliers and employees if they do not make the appropriate provisions before London 2012 kicks off,” said Andrew Bale, CEO of Resilient Networks. “These results highlight the importance of telecommunications to businesses and yet they show that they are not communicating clearly internally and do not have the right infrastructure in place to withstand the scale of disruption anticipated. How do businesses intend to ensure 'business as usual' if something as simple as a phone call is not reaching the right person at the right time?"
The research also examined how employees handle incoming calls when they are away from their desk currently. A third of London based workers relying only on voicemail to manage calls remotely. Only eight per cent make use of a call forwarding function. A further third rely on a company or personal mobile – which begs the question will callers know the mobile numbers of all those they need to contact in your business and will mobile networks suffer from congestion as they have done before during major disruptions.
"At the end of the day voice continuity is an essential part of ensuring a business can operate day to day. Afterall it's hardly business as usual if your consumers can't reach the right person at the right time to assist them. Businesses need to ensure they have covered all bases before the Olympics to avoid any downtime, they should communicate all procedures to staff to avoid the disconnect we have seen reported and play out scenarios before it's too late," concluded Bale.
The Resilient Networks report can be downloaded below. It gives a full overview of all the findings from the report as well as offering practical tips on what to look out for when updating or structuring a business continuity plan.
Resilient Networks 'one to recognise' in Sunday Times Tech Track 100
London, 19th September 2011: Voice services provider Resilient Networks plc has been acknowledged as 'one to recognise' in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 league table of private tech (TMT) companies for its continued leadership and growth in the voice market.
The Sunday Times Tech Track Ones to Recognise commended Resilient Networks consistently strong growth in the last four years, which has resulted from its provision of innovative and robust telecoms solutions for customers such as the Ministry of Defence, through its partnerships with BT and Orange. Resilient Network's sales grew 23% a year from £3.5m in 2007 to £6.5m in 2010.
"Resilient Networks is an innovative and agile company, constantly focused on offering the most robust and flexible managed voice solutions and it's incredibly exciting to be recognised for this in such a forum" commented Andrew Bale, CEO, Resilient Networks plc. "The consistent and strong growth we have experienced is a result not only of the market-leading solutions we provide but also the people behind them and our close relationships with our partners. We are poised for further growth and success as we move in to 2012."
Extending the role of the data centre
A new whitepaper examines the benefits of centralising the delivery and management of voice services from the PSTN, and role the data centre has to play in this.
London, 21st July 2011: Resilient Networks plc and BroadGroup, international consulting specialists, today announced a new joint whitepaper focussed upon extending the role of the data centre and how, for the first time, larger businesses now have a choice to select the level at which they integrate with the PSTN.
In looking to consolidate all critical ICT services into the data centre, CIOs have often been constrained by the limitations of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Whilst their private voice network may bring modern centralised IP voice services to allow inter- and intra-company calling, calls made from the PSTN to their private networks have had to follow a fixed, geographically dispersed, delivery model – one that, until now, has been at odds with their data centre strategy.
This whitepaper, Extending the role of the Data Centre, describes the drivers supporting the centralised delivery and management of PSTN voice services into the data centre. It explains the problems faced by large multi-sited organisations today and highlights how they can benefit by moving away from shared PSTN access infrastructure to a dedicated and direct connection with the PSTN.
It provides specific examples of how organisations have successfully extended the PSTN Core Network to the enterprise, which removes, rather than replaces, the PSTN Access Network. One of the user examples analyzed in the whitepaper found that as the solution is rolled out to its 6,000 employees, savings of up to 40% on line rental and call charges are expected.
"Delivering voice services through the data centre rather through the local office, offers reduced costs, increased agility and resilience," commented Steve Wallage, managing director of BroadGroup Consulting.
Andrew Bale, CEO, Resilient Networks plc added, "Our work with BroadGroup has shown growth in demand from larger businesses looking for a dedicated interconnect between the public voice network and their private network. The data centre offers the logical way to achieve this."
The whitepaper includes detailed user interviews, case studies and market analysis to examine these growing trends and assess how vendors, operators and users should respond.
Resilient Networks plc reorganise for growth
Resilient promote Andrew Bale to CEO, and announce two new senior management appointments – Dr. Antonio Filippi as CFO and Tim Jalland as VP Products & Propositions.
London, 11th April 2011: Resilient Networks plc today announced a strengthening of the management team in response to a 40% growth in revenues and a 90% growth in bookings. The company is now strengthening its management team for the challenges of further growth and the responsibilities that go with providing critical services to a major part of the UK banking and defence sectors.
Andrew Bale has been promoted to CEO. Andrew has been with the company for 4 years as Chief Operating Officer and has built the foundations of the company's growing success. Andrew Bale said “I am excited about leading Resilient Networks on to its next phase of growth. We have an excellent team in place to drive the business forward, maintaining our growth, and ensuring we provide world class services to our enterprise customers.”
Dr. Antonio Filippi has been recruited as CFO. Antonio has a strong background in financial management as FD for European and American companies operating in software and cloud computing and where he was responsible for implementing many of the business processes and risk oversight that fast growing companies require. Antonio is President of CIMA central London branch.
Tim Jalland has been recruited as VP Product and Propositions. Building strong propositions is at the heart of the company's success. Tim joins from Airwave where he led a large team of product managers and developers responsible for delivering critical communications solutions to organisations that provide vital services to the public. Previous experience in product management and building high growth businesses with 3COM and GEC computers also provides Tim with vital skills to build the company's propositions into new markets.
Geoffrey Paterson, Chairman of Resilient Networks said “This reorganisation signals a new maturity and strength in our management team to meet our growing responsibilities to the large organisations in finance and defence we serve. Andrew has already demonstrated strong leadership and Antonio and Tim will bring important focus on extending our processes and robust risk management.”