Direct Technical
Redcentric and Direct Technical have worked together for many years, providing a wide range of services to Direct Technical’s end clients. We caught up with Bob Gilchrist, their Managing Director, after Redcentric successfully handled a managed infrastructure migration to hear his first-hand experiences of working with Redcentric and build this Q&A.
The challenge
The scope of the project was to replace the network routing, firewalling and switching in a full-height rack at the Gatwick data centre.
Recognising their expertise was in servers and storage, Direct Technical found they were too often engaged in routing, firewalling and switching issues. It was a surprise to find faults in equipment from a major switch vendor, and a switch stacking failure at 1am proved to be the final straw. Direct Technical started looked for a single provider of support for their network infrastructure. They contacted Redcentric and found a willingness to help, so they composed a detailed statement of requirement and Redcentric provided a proposal that would work for both Direct Technical and their clients.
Increased monitoring capabilities
Exceeds expectations on reliability
Supported expert migration
The low level of issues exceeds my expectations and I regard the project as a resounding success. It continues to be a pleasure to work with the Redcentric technical team, who we find to be enthusiastic, diligent and responsible.
“The planned migration needed to be minimally disruptive for Direct Technical’s clients, some of whom work 24/7. Direct Technical had several meetings with the Redcentric technical department and together structured a plan which would see the work completed over four successive weekends. The plan was put before Direct Technical clients who agreed to it. In the event, the project was completed over just three weekends.”
What Direct Technology have to say
“I wish I had thought of making this change earlier than we did; I would have had fewer sleepless nights! I encourage other hosted businesses to consider the benefits of outsourcing monitoring, management and maintenance of vital network infrastructure to a team who have a focus and expertise in routing, switching and firewalling.”