Stanhope Business Centres -
Case Study

Based in Covent Garden, in the heart of London's West End, Stanhope Business Centres are a new concept in serviced offices, seeking to offer businesses a prestige, unbranded serviced office capability. When Stanhope approached Centrix in late 2004, the company was looking to build on the successful telecommunications and internet infrastructure deployed by Centrix in Stanhope's first building, 53 Chandos Place, at a second site in nearby Floral Street. At Chandos Place, Centrix had been selected in 2003 via a competitive tender to supply an Avaya DEFINITY® telephone system and Medusa internet delivery product.

Tender Process

Although Centrix was approached by Stanhope as the incumbent solutions provider, the work at Floral Street was put out to tender, with Centrix competing for the business against two other players in the market.    Centrix's proposal was based around using a range of wireless technologies to leverage the existing investment that had been made at Chandos Place, rather than simply repeating the work done at the first install.  

Centrix was selected as the provider of choice for Floral Street, and the installation took place between February and March 2005. Wi-Fi and laser-based technologies were deployed simultaneously in order to effectively 'link' the two sites together. This dual connectivity ensures resilience in times of bad weather or other interference, while utilising the existing investment made at Chandos Place. This enabled Stanhope to reap significant economies of scale and cost-savings, as there was no need to re-invest in new BT lines, voicemail, call logging capabilities, and all the other functionality that a state-of-the-art business centre requires. Furthermore, as the Centrix solutions uses IP telephony over Wi-Fi, a number of innovative applications can be deployed over the IP network, such as video conferencing.

Mirijana Sormaz, Manager at Stanhope Business Centres, said: "Selecting Floral Street as a site for our second building was a pretty big step for us. The liabilities for these kind of operations are clearly magnified when you're setting up shop in Covent Garden, so we needed to make sure we got the technology platform right first time to enable us to start filling the space as soon as was viable. The opportunity to reduce hardware and installation costs by extending the range of our Chandos Place platform wirelessly was obviously very attractive to us as a result."

Richard Burbage, Sales & Marketing Director at Centrix, notes:
"Because of the proximity of two buildings, which are only 200 metres apart, it was sensible to consider wireless connectivity combined with IP telephony to realise cost-savings at installation and when the operations are up and running.   It was also crucial that the solution we put in place was completely seamless - none of the users at Floral Street have any idea they are using IP-over-WiFi when they dial 9 for an outside line!"

Burbage continues:
"The only constraint to future expansion by Stanhope is the capabilities of the Avaya platform - if Stanhope wants to add a third building nearby, the solution we've put in place would be scaleable enough to do so.   Indeed, this is one of those rare cases when the technology infrastructure will in all likelihood impact Stanhope's business model going forward - now that the company has seen what wireless IP can do for it."

Mirijana Sormaz concludes:
"We went out to tender for the Floral Street solution but it was quickly apparent that Centrix fully understood our requirements and were competitively priced to deliver against them. The voice and data solution was implemented smoothly and ahead of schedule and the after-sales service from Centrix has been exemplary."

Project Overview

• Migrate from existing DEFINITY® si platform to new S8500 Media Server and G650 Media Gateway with IP telephony and centralised voicemail;
• Install new EPN (Enhanced Port Network) at Floral Street using G650 Media Gateways and IP telephony with QoS (Quality of Service);
• Utilise Avaya C360 PoE (Power over Ethernet) Switches;
• Install Wireless 54Mbs WiFi (802.11g) link;
• Install Laser 100Mbs link for resilience;
• Additional Medusa Slave unit for use at Floral Street;
• Tenant Partitioning for both buildings.

About Centrix

Based in Winchfield, Hampshire and Central London Centrix deliver converged voice, data and IP solutions to European businesses.

Through partnerships with global companies such as Avaya, Cisco, Energis, MCI, NetScreen and Braxtel and as a service provider for BT Wholesale, we have the resource, knowledge, and inhouse expertise, to design a tailored solution coupled with our bespoke installation, training and maintenance service.

From relatively simple ISDN-based PBXs to IP-based corporate networks, our knowledge in the convergence of voice and data puts us in the unique position of being able to discuss, design and implement the solution from the initial planning to the on-going support after the installation.

Contact

Ian Calder ian.calder@centrix-uk.com
Mark Houlding (PR) mark@rostrumpr.com  

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