Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 62 | Page 64

CASE STUDY

Established as a franchise by Abellio in 2019 , East Midlands Railway ( EMR ) connects people and places across the East Midlands and through to London . Working in partnership to connect cities , support communities and create easier journeys for everyone , EMR is investing £ 600 million bringing customer improvements to its services , trains and stations .

As part of this investment , the company is improving its trains and introducing a new intercity fleet , as well as refurbishing two new , faster and more modern regional fleets . To keep passengers up-to-date , the organisation has launched a new website , mobile app and ticket buying facilities , while encouraging Smartcard use to help reduce paper waste and streamline the travel experience .
Challenge
To facilitate these significant infrastructure and service improvements , EMR needed to increase its network connectivity capacity by a factor of four , while also adding previously unconnected greenfield station sites to its network for the first time – representing approximately one-third of its overall station estate .
This was an obligation put to EMR by the Department for Transport to ensure it could provide excellent passenger connectivity across all EMR stations .
Key to delivering these objectives was upgrading and replacing legacy IT infrastructure hardware , software and services inherited by EMR when it took over the franchise . The existing technologies were not only both costly and unstable but didn ’ t provide the data connectivity needed by 21st-century passengers who expect to be able to use their digital devices at all times .
Solution
Node4 provided a comprehensive response to EMR ’ s tender process while offering flexibility around delivery and terms , all supported by competitive commercials . This included the availability of its Midlands data centre for EMR server hosting , extensive networking capabilities and references from businesses EMR had experience working with .
The Digital Transformation solution comprises fully managed , secure SD-WAN connectivity across 104 EMR sites , six racks of colocation space within the Node4 data centre and offsite backup
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