Intellectual Property firm, Marks & Clerk, selects COLT Ethernet for 13-site network; Demand for Ethernet grows amongst SMEs as well as large organisations

21 April 2009 – COLT, a leading European provider of business communications, has extended the reach of its Ethernet services right across the UK in response to fast growing demand from SMEs as well as large organisations for higher speed and lower cost data networks. This is part of an ongoing programme to extend the reach and capabilities of COLT-grade Ethernet services in the UK and globally. 

Building on its long-standing reputation as a quality Ethernet services provider to businesses in London, Manchester and Birmingham, COLT can now offer highly secure and competitively priced Ethernet connections for branch offices and headquarters anywhere in the country, thanks to new interconnect arrangements (Ethernet NNI). Customers can now benefit from the same quality they are used to with COLT Ethernet on a nationwide basis. 

One of the first UK customers to take advantage of COLT’s extended reach is leading intellectual property firm, Marks & Clerk. COLT has connected its 13 offices across the UK and in Luxembourg using its Ethernet Private Network solution.

Tim Roche, IT director at Marks & Clerk LLP, said, “We have expanded rapidly over the last few years and have centralised our IT applications so that we can operate more easily as a single brand. We needed one technology partner who could connect together all our offices and data centres, providing the technical expertise we don’t have inhouse and a robust disaster recovery solution. COLT’s Ethernet solution is the best choice for us because it is so simple to manage and easy to scale the bandwidth up and down as we grow the business further.” 

Andy Horn, head of SME, COLT UK added, “Ethernet is increasingly recognised as the de facto technology for data networks because it is the simplest, most flexible and lowest cost way to deliver IT applications across a business – as IT budgets get squeezed, it’s increasingly relevant.

“Ethernet has traditionally been used by larger organisations only for wide area networks, but we are now seeing real demand amongst SMEs as the number of applications and volume of data they need for their business is growing exponentially. As businesses look to increase video-conferencing, centralise IT applications and use software as a service, demand for Ethernet networks will only increase further. It’s essential that businesses across the UK have access to choice and value for money when it comes to new data services.” 

Recent forecasts by IDC support this growth trend. According to IDC’s latest European WAN Managers survey 2008, there will be an 18% increase in companies using Ethernet in 2009. 

COLT, a four time winner of the Metro Ethernet Forum’s European Service Provider of the year award, has made a series of developments to its Ethernet services in the last year including expanding COLT-grade Ethernet to the USA to New York, Chicago, Boston and Newark. It is also using the latest Carrier Ethernet technology as the basis for its next generation network. COLT’s multi-service platform is already being used to serve customers across COLT’s UK network and is being rolled out across COLT’s pan-European network over the next quarter.