Mott MacDonald case study
THE COMPANY
The Mott MacDonald Group is a management, engineering and development consultancy serving the public and private sectors world-wide.
Mott MacDonald's US $1.5 billion business spans 120 countries with 13,000 staff working in all sectors from transport, energy, buildings, water and the environment, to health and education, industry and communications.
Their breadth of skills, sectors, services and global reach makes them one of the world's top players in delivering management, engineering and development solutions.
THE CUSTOMER'S CHALLENGE
In the UK, Mott MacDonald has an MPLS network from Easynet which connects all 36 sites nationwide.
Mott MacDonald has an unusually demanding requirement from their network given the very high bandwidths they require. The company regularly transmits high quality blueprints, designs and schematics at very high resolution. Such data traffic requires a substantial bandwidth to cope with the complexity of the content and to send it quickly and reliably, and the traffic pattern also requires a symmetrical connection.
Another key requirement for Mott MacDonald is a highly robust solution in terms of backup – not a backup which merely provides a connection with a lower bandwidth but a backup as effective and reliable as the primary connection, and also with a bandwidth as near as possible to the primary bandwidth.
Ultimately, the high bandwidth, symmetrical broadband and robust backup solution all had to be delivered within Mott MacDonald's commercial constraints.
THE NETWORK COLLECTIVE APPROACH
The Network Collective implemented a Virtual RFP process that addressed and answered a number of key questions for Mott MacDonald.
The Virtual RFP process, which is unique to The Network Collective, focused on providing a very detailed view of the market including the following deliverables:
- Baselining and benchmarking the network requirements against the "street price" Easynet would offer for that network if procured today
- Evaluating a range of competitor service providers and the commercial, technical and service benefits Mott MacDonald could realise through migration
- Considering the pros and cons of the various service providers, including a detailed assessment of the service capabilities of each
- Making recommendations for the future based on the findings of the Virtual RFP review and analysis
The Network Collective supported Mott MacDonald throughout their decision-making and thought process. It became clear that their requirements were necessarily quite complex and could not in fact be resolved in the short term by a move to a new supplier. Renewing with their current supplier gave Mott MacDonald significant commercial and technical benefit in the short term and also the time and space to consider their longer term options.
THE CUSTOMER'S VIEW
"It is always difficult for a customer of one network provider to get a clear understanding of how the service compares with other providers, and what options exist for those other providers to deliver alternative networks. The Network Collective provided the service we were looking for with the minimum of fuss and delivered a clear report which showed the way forward for us, both in the medium and longer terms.
We have continued to employ Network Collective for other studies and have been similarly satisfied on each occasion."
John Gill, IT Director, Mott MacDonald
