University of Law selects SSE

The University of Law – the world’s leading professional law school – has selected SSE Telecoms – one of the UK’s largest providers of network infrastructure and data centre services, and part of the SSE Group – to deliver a completely new Ethernet networking solution to support the University of Law’s researchers, students and lecturers with always-on, performance optimised inter-site connectivity and internet access.

The University of Law has facilities in Birmingham, Bristol, Chester, Guildford, London Bloomsbury, London Moorgate, Manchester and York. In order to connect these sites, SSE Telecoms delivered a Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) solution, a high bandwidth network, offering an initial 500Mb to all eight sites, and an internet service that can rapidly scale to support the collaborative nature of the law school and to meet growing international demand for the University’s courses.

“As the world’s leading professional law school, trusted by members of the legal profession for over 100 years, we had high expectations from the outset” said Paul Day, Acting CIO at The University of Law. “We required a high bandwidth, high availability connectivity solution that would allow us to connect our facilities across the UK, ensuring that all staff and students had access to essential resources and information around the clock, without fail.”

Day continued: “The legal services industry is reputation driven and fast-paced by nature and we needed to ensure that we could keep up with all developments and to ensure that our students continue to receive the very best tuition. As a result, we needed a solution that was scalable enough to support the sometimes unpredictable and rapidly growing demand for our services from collaborators across the globe. The flexibility of SSE Telecoms’ solution provides us with the confidence that our needs are not only met now, but also in the future, which will be crucial for us as we re-locate from York to Leeds.”

SSE Telecoms recently announced a significant network expansion, Project Edge, which was key to the University of Law in its rigorous selection process. Project Edge is designed to greatly increase the service reach, capacity and service feature set for SSE Telecoms’ VPLS Ethernet platform, cementing its position as the high bandwidth service provider of choice for the UK’s leading enterprises. This was crucial to the university, as it needs to facilitate the collaborative needs of its staff and students, while ensuring that the institution’s global reputation is protected from any embarrassing service outages.

“We are very proud to be working with the world’s leading professional law school, and look forward to supporting a seamless transition for its staff and students during the move from York to Leeds later this year,” said Chris Jagusz, managing director of SSE Telecoms. “The face of modern education is continuously changing. Our solutions have been built with flexibility in mind, which enables us to deliver a fully personalised service, as well as ongoing advice and technical expertise to ensure that the university’s staff and students continue to get the very best from our services.”