Teneo helps Business Environment to deliver bandwidth tailored to its clients’ needs

Business Environment is the leading owner and provider of serviced offices across London and southern England, with offices in sixteen locations totalling 700,000 square feet of space, providing flexible and cost effective office accommodation. It has invested £50m in acquiring and refurbishing buildings in the last three years, and is set to invest a further £100m in new serviced offices over the next three years.

Having won the ‘Business Centre of the Year’ awards for three out of the last four years, Business Environment is particularly concerned that the quality of its client services is perfect. The business offers its clients a comprehensive package of services within their monthly charge, including telephony line rental and calls, plus business class broadband provision. Business Environment has 100Mbps dedicated leased lines into each of its buildings, but the bandwidth provision could not be guaranteed as it was being allocated to users on a first-come, first-served basis. Early starters could take disproportionately large shares of the bandwidth, leaving others short.

Business Environment had entry-level bandwidth management using Cisco’s Committed Access Rate (CAR) feature on their Cisco network switches and routers that could permanently block certain types of network traffic. But technology users found ways around these blocks. Graham Hefferman, IT and communications director for Business Environment, invited suppliers to suggest solutions that would enable the business to pro-actively manage their bandwidth using bandwidth segmentation to ensure all users could receive their agreed bandwidth allocation.

Teneo responded to the brief and won the business with a solution using Allot’s NetEnforcer appliances, installing an appliance in each office location and linking all units back to a central server at its headquarters in London. Using Allot NetEnforcer, Graham and his team can investigate the data traffic protocols an individual is using, such as HTTP web browsing and peer-to-peer traffic. With a simple on-screen dashboard and powerful traffic analysis tools, Business Environment can now enforce policies to ensure that each user is adhering to their bandwidth allocation which he/she receives as part of their inclusive service package.

The Allot solution also allows Graham to report back to clients on the type of network traffic their employees typically use. It also allows a client to impose their own internet policy if they feel employees are spending too much time and bandwidth on non-business activities.

Graham Hefferman, IT and communications director, Business Environment, commented:
“Previously we would not guarantee bandwidth as it was subject to individual usage of our clients, but as a result we were not effectively managing our bandwidth for future needs. We now have a unique selling proposition of providing a user bandwidth guarantee. This not only helps our selling proposition, it also enables us to effectively manage our bandwidth and most importantly it enables to our clients exactly what we promised.”

James Hall, marketing director, Teneo, commented:
“The Allot NetEnforcer solution provides Business Environment with the tools they need to allocate bandwidth, monitor network traffic and enforce network rules. Many serviced office providers as well as corporations are struggling to take control of their bandwidth and keep on buying more. Solutions such as Allot NetEnforcer allow organisations to manage bandwidth to ensure fair use, prioritise business traffic and reduce non-productive usage.”