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On assignment for the Croydon Council Economic Development Team, Gary Ling, visits a local business making the most of the government's Connection Voucher Scheme.
| DMC's Connection Stats: Supplier: Virgin Media Business : 30Mb/100Mb bearer Type: Fibre Installation cost to server room: £3300 (plus VAT) Length of Contract: 3 Years Monthly Cost: £420 (plus VAT) |
Somewhere in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) there is a Mandarin who once dreamed about IT Manager Kevin Streatfield. They didn’t know his name or where he plies his trade. Yet, Kevin is the model network administrator that the DCMS had in mind when it devised the UK Connection Voucher Scheme (CVS). The CVS aims to award vouchers to small and medium sized businesses, charities, social enterprises and other not-for-profit enterprises to assist them to upgrade their Internet connections to Hi-Grade broadband.
DMC is the first business on the Purley Way to have fibre broadband
As part of his duties, Kevin looks after the broadband requirements of DMC Business Machines plc, a medium sized, acquisitive, Croydon-based enterprise with annual revenues of £40 million, employing 115 people across the country. As the first CVS award recipient in the borough, DMC used the £3,000 voucher on offer to make a quantitative shift in speed from a 10 megabit per second (Mbps) broadband Internet connection to a 30 Mbps symmetrical one (where users on the DMC network can upload and download at the same fast speeds) with Virgin Media. The move also allowed Kevin to qualitatively improve the levels of network service that he could offer to both internal and external DMC customers.
In fact, a visit to DMC on the Purley Way, Croydon, industrial park finds a bustling firm which, like its global namesake, International Business Machines (IBM), has morphed over the past 30 years from a product-led business selling stand-alone machines (in DMC’s case, printers, scanners, copiers) to a technology services company offering advice and high level customer service to growing, networked, customer base.
In fact, a visit to DMC on the Purley Way, Croydon, industrial park finds a bustling firm which, like its global namesake, International Business Machines (IBM), has morphed over the past 30 years from a product-led business selling stand-alone machines (in DMC’s case, printers, scanners, copiers) to a technology services company offering advice and high level customer service to growing, networked, customer base.
 As it morphs into a service-led company with networked business machines DMC, gives its employees latitude to work from home and meet up in a ‘breakout room’ with this mural showing its “Decidedly Different” motto | To Kevin, upgrading digital connections to the fastest speed practicable is essential to this. “We are a company with a national sales and customer services operation,” he says. “Many colleagues work from home. We offer fibre to the home as a first choice for them and ADSL where this is not available. Smartphone use has also exploded as people stay in touch and execute tasks that used to be done on a desktop, when they are on the road. Staying connected with us here in Croydon is an essential prerequisite for us all to be able to deliver great service to the enterprises that use our products. Fast Internet is a proven productivity booster.” |
As we visit DMC’s server room where Virgin’s external broadband cable terminates, you can see that Kevin takes his role seriously. I feel I am lucky to have made it this far in the building given his penchant for security. I am accompanied everywhere and Kevin required pre-visit references before I was even allowed over the threshold. Kevin’s caution also shows through in his view of DMC using The Cloud. “Not right us for us at present,” he asserts, “too expensive and we need reliability. I like to have my finger on the pulse.” I open my mouth to express the conventional thought that future use of The Cloud is inevitable for a business like DMC but think better of it. In any case, Kevin half-acknowledges this point when he states: “With the CVS broadband connection that we have now, which is upgradable to 100 mbps - we’re ready for it in any case. We can expand and grow as the business requirement dictates.”
Connecting with Attitude. “Fast Internet is a proven productivity booster for DMC” says Kevin Streatfield.
In snapping a photo of Kevin in his lair, I ask about the ‘Planitgreen’ box on show. Kevin seems to grow an inch as he proudly explains: “That’s our branded toner solution. We sell 1000 toners a week now and it’s a business that’s growing fast, with a contribution from each sale going towards the Starlight foundation charity. We also collect and recycle all the cartridges completely free - all a customer has to do is login and arrange a time for collection. If they want to order more toner our fast lease connection means that they can do so instantly and the whole process is seamlessly booked into our integrated Sage accounting system. We will shortly open two web stores which will also use this same infrastructure.”
I ask Kevin about uptime and redundancy. Unsurprisingly, he has the key data points on the tip of his tongue: “We were, at some busy periods, using 98% of the 10 meg line. On average we’re using 25-30% of the new pipe throughout the day so far but its early days. Still, I sleep better at night knowing we are not bumping up against a capacity ceiling at any time. Also we can plan to grow knowing that if the directors agree to acquire more companies we can accommodate new people, upgrade our service offerings and introduce new features. What’s more, we are at the cutting edge of the ‘Internet of Things’. The business machines we install on client premises increasingly tell us about whether they need a service, have a fault or simply need some new toner. The DMC Mother ship needed more bandwidth in order cope with the smarter business machines on client premises.”
More surprisingly, when I ask about usage, Kevin says, “It’s all about uploads for us. The marketing guys might view videos on line and upload ours to YouTube but mostly it’s about our engineers, sales people and customer service reps uploading data to our enterprise systems. Having a symmetrical connection makes all the difference rather than an old ADSL one.”
In terms of getting the connection Kevin says that the Voucher was essential. “The £3,000 voucher made the investment case much easier for the directors to sign off. I don’t think we would have upgraded without it. Everyone can now see the real benefits of a fibre connection. Virgin had to bring fibre at least 500 meters from the main road to our location and amazingly we are the only ones using it at the moment on the Purley Way. Virgin Media Business was very good throughout – first class – which, frankly, was essential given the importance of the Internet, at whatever speed, to our business. We’re set for growth and I have a lot of happy Users!”
All of which must be music to the ears of the DCMS Mandarin and his colleagues at the Greater London authority and Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) who are administering the CVS Scheme in Croydon. It’s not always the case that a dream becomes a faster reality!
I ask Kevin about uptime and redundancy. Unsurprisingly, he has the key data points on the tip of his tongue: “We were, at some busy periods, using 98% of the 10 meg line. On average we’re using 25-30% of the new pipe throughout the day so far but its early days. Still, I sleep better at night knowing we are not bumping up against a capacity ceiling at any time. Also we can plan to grow knowing that if the directors agree to acquire more companies we can accommodate new people, upgrade our service offerings and introduce new features. What’s more, we are at the cutting edge of the ‘Internet of Things’. The business machines we install on client premises increasingly tell us about whether they need a service, have a fault or simply need some new toner. The DMC Mother ship needed more bandwidth in order cope with the smarter business machines on client premises.”
More surprisingly, when I ask about usage, Kevin says, “It’s all about uploads for us. The marketing guys might view videos on line and upload ours to YouTube but mostly it’s about our engineers, sales people and customer service reps uploading data to our enterprise systems. Having a symmetrical connection makes all the difference rather than an old ADSL one.”
In terms of getting the connection Kevin says that the Voucher was essential. “The £3,000 voucher made the investment case much easier for the directors to sign off. I don’t think we would have upgraded without it. Everyone can now see the real benefits of a fibre connection. Virgin had to bring fibre at least 500 meters from the main road to our location and amazingly we are the only ones using it at the moment on the Purley Way. Virgin Media Business was very good throughout – first class – which, frankly, was essential given the importance of the Internet, at whatever speed, to our business. We’re set for growth and I have a lot of happy Users!”
All of which must be music to the ears of the DCMS Mandarin and his colleagues at the Greater London authority and Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) who are administering the CVS Scheme in Croydon. It’s not always the case that a dream becomes a faster reality!
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