United Living Group (ULG) was formed in 2014 following the merger of two major players in the social housing sector, United House Limited and Bullock Construction. With a vision to become one of the UK’s leading providers of affordable housing and sustainable solutions, ULG required a first class IT network to support its growing workforce and clientele. During the initial integration process, ULG recognised the need for an enterprise-grade IT provider to consolidate its network and communications assets and to support the increasing flow of information across its data network.
United Living
ULG chose Six Degrees to support the merger as the managed services provider could provide the necessary enterprise-grade technology and supporting expertise to integrate the original companies. Morley explains, “Prior to the merger, Six Degrees had delivered United House’s wide area network (WAN), IP telephony and Disaster Recovery (DR) services so we knew they were capable of delivering what we desired.” In preparation for the merger, Six Degrees helped ULG obtain a unified network and common infrastructure to underpin the new operations. The team deployed two bridges between the Bullock Construction WAN and United House’s existing Six Degrees infrastructure, one at the Bullock Construction head office in the West Midlands and one in a regional office in the North West, allowing the Six Degrees WAN network to be suitably extended. Six Degrees also deployed its IP telephony voice offering across 400 users for ULG, a solution which has the built-in capacity to grow as and when the new company expands. The service is delivered over Six Degrees' high speed, high quality, secure network, and leverages their SIP services and business continuity capabilities. Morley comments: “Six Degrees' IP telephony solution provides a unified communications service across the group, giving staff access to video and collaboration tools on virtually any device. Our employees now benefit from the capabilities of an on-premise solution, with the business advantages of cloud, such as cost and scalability.” Six Degrees has also leveraged its colocation services to provide ULG with increased DR capabilities. Prior to the merger, United House was using Six Degrees' London data centre to back up its head office operations. Therefore, when integration began, Six Degrees migrated United House’s head office server infrastructure to its South Birmingham data centre providing the new ULG with a triangular network connection (from the 6DG London and South Birmingham data centres to the ULG head office in Swanley).
ULG deals with increasing amounts of tenant data, which needs to be stored in a highly secure environment, in line with industry legislation. Six Degrees is able to provide this flexibility without compromising ULG’s compliance and security needs. Morley concludes: “Six Degrees has provided us with an integrated and sophisticated network that meets our everyday and future business demands. We are now a large provider of affordable housing and sustainable solutions in the UK and downtime is simply not an option. Offering flexibility, scalability and security, our unified voice solutions, underpinned by the Six Degrees network, will ensure our communications are always running effectively. Having known and worked with Six Degrees for a long time now, we trust the team and the solutions they provide. We are pleased to have Six Degrees by our side as we embark on the next steps of our united journey as ULG.”