Reading Borough Council

After the re-organisation of Local Government, Reading Borough Council became a unitary authority. Overnight, the council increased in size by 400%. This expansion is a daunting prospect for any company, not least in the crucial area of IT integration and service availability. For Reading Borough Council, this challenge became reality when the organisation expanded from 13 to 178 sites.

Pinacl Solutions, retained on a 10 year contract, is responsible for managing both the fixed and mobile telephony and data networks for the council. Pinacl Solutions role is also to support the ongoing development programmes for e-Government initiatives and to achieve goals set for "Best Value".

With Local Authorities reassessing their IT structure and looking at Managed Services as a route for providing 'best value', the Reading project is a fine example of Public Private Sector Partnership. As Reading's John Barnfield describes: "Thanks to Pinacl Solutions and the other strategic business and community partners, we are now on the way to developing the IT structure and systems that will enable the Council to deliver services electronically to the public by 2005".

Key Features

Reading Borough Council adopted an innovative route to overcome the increase in size - "Intelligent Outsourcing" - it implemented over a planned period a totally integrated, Managed Services solution ranging from staffing help desks through to mainframe data processing management.

Reading has transferred all voice and data assets in trust to Pinacl Solutions for the duration of the 10 year contract, taking most of the burden away from Reading's IT Managers. Enabling Pinacl Solutions to ensure a 99.9 percent service availability level and operational support.

Selecting the right partners was crucial to the sort of project. Existing networks were given a complete 'technology refresh' involving key partners: Cisco and Mitel (hardware and software); BT Ignite and NTL (circuits connecting the borough's WAN); and Telindus (cable modems connecting smaller remote sites).

Bandwidth is absolutely crucial, particularly as the council is developing its strategy under the National Grid for Learning and creating a connected learning community. Moving digitised images around via the internet could potentially create a bandwidth bottleneck. Pinacl Solutions solved this problem by giving Reading the ability to switch additional bandwidth on and off according to demand.

Another innovative approach provided by Pinacl Solutions which was adopted by Reading council, was to pay for services on a per-port basis to allow managers to maintain a tighter grip on their costs.

Additional projects included, Pinacl Solutions providing technical support for the highly complex relocation of over 600 staff to a modern and more cost-effective building without any major disruption.