ic case study | CATERING & HOSPITALITY

Alliance Disposables

Turnover: £125m

Employees: 500+

Solutions provided:

Alliance Disposables is the leading independent supplier of wholesale catering equipment to the UK’s hospitality industry and public sector. With a nationwide network of branches from London to Glasgow. Alliance supply the largest range of high quality commercial catering equipment to over 2000 businesses every day including hospitality and leisure facilities, to universities and care homes.

Greystone Partnership introduced Internet Central to Alliance Disposables as a trusted partner of over a decade, to help them combat their internal internet and telephony issues.


SITUATION

Alliance Disposables existing internet was slow, unmanageable and proved problematic when trying to access central files such as email and internal ordering systems. Alliance’s voice traffic was also being impacted and employees and customers would experience call quality issues when making and receiving phone calls. The lack of network efficiency was costing the business in loss of productivity and staff were getting ever more frustrated.

TASK
Alliance required a solution that would fit current and future requirements to cope with business growth. They needed dedicated leased line connectivity and Quality of Service added to their internet bandwidth so that they could separate all browsing

and email application usage from their phone system traffic. Alliance had to ensure that the leased lines installed could be upscaled at short notice to keep one step ahead of their projected growth. It was also imperative for Alliance that their external IT provider, Greystone, were able to work in tandem with their chosen Internet Service Provider.

Internet Central initially provided us with a single IC-Air microwave link for our HQ internet connection. That was 12 years ago. Since then, Internet Central now assist Alliance with 12 sites across the UK, connected by a number of dedicated leased lines, all protected by managed Fortigate Unified Threat Protection Firewalls. Internet Central’s pre and post-sales support is first-class and they are always happy to help and advise us where necessary

Ben McDougall
IT MANAGER
GREYSTONE PARTNERSHIP

ACTION
Internet Central worked to determine Alliance Disposables need for a cost effective and reactive solution with full scope to scale to Gigabit technology.

Alliance established the requirement for flexible connectivity thus wanted scalable leased lines at each of their 12 sites, alongside reliable firewall protection to allow each site to communicate back to their main offices.

RESULT
Alliance Disposables are delighted that Internet Central improved internet speeds of over 10 x that of their previous network. This alleviated all of Alliance’s internet and call quality issues, and still remains the case after over a decade of working with Internet Central.

With the help of Internet Central’s internal Data Analytics, we are able to predict if any sites are going to exceed their internet bandwidth and proactively upgrade those sites at short notice.

Applying Quality of Service and splitting the voice usage from the internet usage, also means the network remains fast and efficient without one entity affecting the other.
Greystone Partnership continue to build their brand using Internet Central services, as a result of the success of Alliance.