GBM is an independent firm of engineering consultants specialising in the development, design and construction of new mining projects.

To accommodate their growing business requirements, GBM needed to acquire additional office space. Having identified suitable expansion space located two floors above them in their existing office building, GBM needed to integrate this additional office space into their existing IT network and telephone system architecture. 

Online Support sought to maximise the use of GBM's existing ICT investment to deliver a flexible, performance driven connectivity solution at minimum cost. The seamless integration of the two floors of office space was achieved by extending the telephone system via multicore cable and using Gigabit ring technology for data giving a fault tolerant 2 Gb link between floors. The new floor was then fully cabled with telephone and data ports.

Speed: 

By deploying a Gigabit ring, Online Support circumvented the requirement for a VPN connection between the offices, ensuring that data transfer rates are delivered at full network speed.

Cost:

This solution eliminated the need for the expensive networking equipment that would have been required to manage the additional external network connections and VPN tunnels. By successfully extending GBM's existing phone system, an expensive upgrade to the existing phone system was also avoided.

Flexibility: 

By connecting the additional space to the existing infrastructure the cost of management was maintained due to the elimination of additional hardware and external data connections.