£7.7m Vanco deal with RMC set in stone

NEWS Virtual network operator Vanco has signed a £7.7m deal with building materials firm RMC to design, implement and manage a wide area network (WAN). The five-year contract will see Vanco develop a virtual network, based typically on 'best-of-breed' third party offerings, that will connect 722 sites around the UK as diverse as offices, quarries and concrete factories - some of which currently have very limited connectivity due to their remote locations. Simon Rutter, head of IT procurement at RMC, said: "One of the main reasons we needed to make this change was because our current network was becoming increasingly complex. The complexity of our business had grown, the number of sites had grown and our bandwidth requirements had grown." "The other reason was cost," he added. "New technologies which have become available such as broadband mean we achieve higher levels of bandwidth and reduce costs." RMC expects to make savings of around 35 per cent per year when the new Vanco infrastructure is rolled out around the turn of the year. Within the cost of the contract are provisos relating to service level agreements. Should Vanco fail to meet delivery expectations, or fail to respond within set timeframes to network-related issues, RMC will start racking up savings against the £7.7m figure. Other important issues for RMC were flexibility and scalability. "We don't know what shape our business will be in a couple of years from now," added Rutter.