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“Macquarie Telecom has enabled us to expand our infrastructure to a more mature level.
Business is made easy by their ‘personal service’ model. They anticipate our needs and are
proactive in bringing us the right solution.”
Chris Poulter,
IT Manager, Unique World
Overview
Unique World’s core purpose is to deliver innovative business solutions that make a difference
to leading organisations and government departments.
Their people are thought leaders, architects, strategists, analysts, designers and trainers.
They are driven by understanding their clients’ needs and applying best practice quickly and
effectively to deliver business value.
Keeping a tight focus on satisfying customers is one of Unique World’s fundamental business
imperatives and its communications capabilities are central to making this happen. Unique
World’s ability to conduct business directly depends on the integrity of its communications
network.
Unique World recognised that outsourcing infrastructure and services to a specialist such
as Macquarie Telecom made sound business sense. They would be able to focus on their core
business as application specialists. It would also provide them with cost-effective protection
against technological redundancy, staff turnover, access to the right skills and growing security
challenges.
Unique World decided to use Macquarie Telecom’s secure Data Centre environment to collocate
its hosting infrastructure. This would provide them with the 24 x 7 support and dual Internet
redundancy necessary to meet their business needs.
The Opportunity
Since 1999, Unique World has maintained a consistent track record of driving business and
operational efficiency for their clients. Unique World’s four practices create integrated
business solutions in the following areas:
Enterprise Solutions, Information Management, Interactive and Program Management. In addition
to IT consulting services Unique World also partners with Unique World Software, a niche software
company within the Unique World group.
With its infrastructure safely housed in Macquarie Telecom’s Intellicentre, the company
turned its attentions to making sure the impact of voice & data communications was a positive
one.
Unique World was experiencing an increasing reliance on its data network and recent business
growth meant the company would require a new PABX infrastructure.
An office move presented the ideal opportunity for Unique World to move to a converged
business VoIP solution as it met its requirement for a fully managed network that was scalable
and flexible.
Chris Poulter, IT Manager for Unique World said that the company also wanted to work with
a business VoIP solution provider who could make it faster and easier for them to connect
their businesses and gain the required efficiencies
“Since Unique World’s business is built on a growth strategy, the communications infrastructure
needed to easily and cost-effectively scale to meet that growth,” Poulter said.
The Solution
Unique World is very focused on processes that are critical to the success of the business.
Its communications infrastructure is regarded as one of Unique World’s strategic assets and
essential to revenue realisation.
Macquarie Telecom successfully proposed a fully managed network solution with quality of
service integrating the high speed Ethernet Metro Accessed Network (MAN).
The converged voice and data network meant that Unique World would be able to cost-effectively
increase the use of its current infrastructure whilst doubling the bandwidth.
Converged platforms offering integrated infrastructure would allow Unique World to leverage
technology to improve business efficiency.
“Maintaining a converged network at peak Quality of Service (QoS) requires a variety of
highly specialised troubleshooting and performance optimisation skills. Macquarie Telecom
have the right skilled people for the job,” Poulter said.
Macquarie Telecom’s prompt turnaround times are critical to any new business implementation
at Unique World.
“The new telephone system was put in operation quickly. Macquarie understands business
critical needs. We use our phone system to answer technical support queries from our customers
as well as for all our internal business needs,” Poulter said.
“The central control panels of our telephony system mean we can configure as we like without
the need to rely on fixed lines or any Telco outside Macquarie. For example, we can allocate
additional phone numbers to new employees, make changes when employees leave, whatever the
business needs.”
The solution also allows Unique World to access multi-peering Internet broadband connectivity,
managed security, complex hosting and WAN integration as well as direct connectivity to Macquarie’s
data network for Unique World to host its own applications for customers.
“Macquarie Telecom have really understood our needs for client hosting from a managed network
point of view,” Poulter said.
“Our communications network plays a vital role in our ability to rapidly respond to our
customers. In a business like ours, there is no room for network downtime.”
Results
Through partnering with Macquarie Telecom, Unique World has been able to empower its team
by providing them with a communications network that supports collaboration and rapid decision-making.
As Unique World migrated to their new IP telephony system, Macquarie ensured quality of
service (QoS) to the WAN and enabled converged voice and data.
By migrating key links to the Macquarie Telecom Metro Access Network (MAN) the existing
data network has double the bandwidth backed up by an additional data network with alternative
accesses at each site.
The platform allows all interoffice voice and data traffic on the wide-area network (WAN)
over common facilities. Running IP trunking between offices has significantly reduced Unique
World’s facility and transport costs. As they drive these expenses down, they have been able
to reinvest these savings on other business technology initiatives.
Chris Poulter says that working with Macquarie Telecom has given Unique World the flexibility
to grow as a business.
“Working with Macquarie Telecom has enabled us to expand our infrastructure to a more mature
level. The entire managed network solution has provided us with a more stable and secure environment
for our hosting solutions.”
Technology planning is an ongoing part of running a business and Unique World has found
the Macquarie Telecom ‘personal service’ model very effective.
“We have one point of contact and with the strong relationship established, we now have
a partnership that understands our business, anticipates our needs and is proactive in bringing
us the right solutions,” Poulter said.
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