Guardian News and Media
The Engagement
Technical Growth were engaged to provide technical design authority services to Guardian News and Media for their relocation from Farringdon to King’s Cross.
This project included the design, procurement and delivery of a new national WAN and London MAN. It also involved the construction of two new data centres, into which six existing data centres were consolidated. These included the hosting of guardian.co.uk, and a unified desktop network environment.
The Problem
Guardian News and Media, publishers of The Guardian, The Observer and guardian.co.uk, were sited at multiple locations around Farringdon. In order to provide a consistent working environment, and improve communication, the decision was made to relocate to King’s Cross, consolidating seven offices and six data centres. This was to include the design, implementation and migration of:
- A national WAN
- A London MAN
- Office LAN and telephone network
To achieve this successfully, it was determined that end-to-end technical oversight was a necessity: from analysis through to delivery.
The Scope of Works
Technical Growth were hired to act as technical design authority for this consolidation project, providing design, analysis and delivery services, as well as advice and input during the RFP and contract negotiation process, to cover the entire project lifecycle.
Key activities undertaken in this role were:
- Business and technical requirements gathering, analysis and capture.
- High-level design based on the above, to be used both for the RFP and technical design phases.
- Input into the RFP and contractor selection processes, including contract reviews.
- Technical direction and advice throughout the project, ensuring that technical designs met requirements and were of a high standard.
- Cross-disciplinary troubleshooting throughout the project.
- Procurement and deployment at all phases of the project, from tender initiation through negotiation and award to contract and SLA construction.
- Technical design ownership and sign-off of the project as a whole.
The Supplied Solution
Technical Growth was involved from the beginning of the project, analysing the business case for the consolidation, analysing and documenting the requirements that would then be used to start off the RFP process. We then provided further advice and input during this process, vendor selection, contract construction and negotiation, consistently ensuring the technical integrity and quality of the project.
Once contracts were agreed upon and work started, we, as design authority, reviewed and signed off all subsequent detailed design, providing both a view of the entire solution and a quality assurance role. During this phase, as well as technical direction and advice, we also provided troubleshooting for the various issues that arose, such as hardware failures and supplier delays.
During the delivery phase, it was our role to review and certify the networks and solutions delivered by selected vendors, and that the overall, resultant solution conformed to all requirements, providing final, technical sign-off. This meant that we were involved throughout the project, from business analysis through to final deployment, providing full technical oversight, and as such were fundamental to its success.
The solution was delivered on time, fully functional, and continues to meet the company’s needs.
The Next Steps
Following the roll-out, we designed and provided technical oversight of the zero-downtime migration of all networks and hosting (including guardian.co.uk) to the new data centres, and the subsequent decomissioning of the old data centres and offices.
We continue to advise the client on technical matters, and provide targeted expertise as their projects demand.
