Staffordshire County Council

Background

Staffordshire County Council provides services across the whole of Staffordshire covering around 800,000 residents with vital services including schools, libraries, social services, trading standards, highways and planning. The network team also provide firewall gateway services for a number of regional District Councils including, Staffordshire Moorlands, South Staffordshire, Lichfield and Staffordshire Connects.

The Challenge

Staffordshire County Councils three year firewall support and maintenance contract with Orange Cyberdefense was up for renewal. Although the local authority was very happy with the existing contract it had a requirement to review the market place for the best value. There was a need to replace some older firewall appliances at Staffordshire Moorlands and Staffordshire Connects as well as upgrading all the other existing gateways at Staffordshire County Council, South Staffordshire District Council and Lichfield District Council to the latest version and the management platform which required a complete rebuild of the infrastructure. In order to get the best value for the authority, Staffordshire decided to go out to tender and received interest from over 20 potential suppliers. The tender document was a comprehensive review with over 30 detailed points on how the prospective supplier would plan, upgrade and support Staffordshire County Councils firewall gateway infrastructure for the next 3 years. The successful supplier would have to offer excellent consultancy and support services, proactive account management to keep the councils IT staff abreast of updates, smart licensing and keen costs to help the authority with their austerity budget

The Solution

Orange Cyberdefense utilised their existing understanding of Staffordshire’s Infrastructure and their expert technical security expertise to formulate a tender response that offered the authority an upgrade to the latest version of their firewall gateways, management console and replaces the old appliances. As part of the tender process, Orange Cyberdefense was able to show Staffordshire County Council how it had performed against its service level agreement (SLA) for the previous 3 year contract, the results were all well within the SLA showing that the level of support had been excellent. Through smart licensing, improved service delivery and consultancy, Orange Cyberdefense identified some key areas that would save Staffordshire a further reduction on the original budget whilst still offering an excellent level of service which would enable the authority to keep well within its service levels.

The Result

Once a detailed project plan had been signed off between the Orange Cyberdefense consultant and Staffordshire County Councils ICT team including a full risk register and back out plan Orange Cyberdefense went about upgrading and replacing the authorities existing infrastructure. The project was delivered without issue and on time including a tricky out of hours high availability management console upgrade. Orange Cyberdefense’s dedicated support service including 5 fully accredited engineers, who have many years’ security experience were on hand to help 24×7 giving the authority peace of mind.

Business Benefits

• Orange Cyberdefense provided Staffordshire County Council an excellent tender response that proved them to still be the best partner to look after the authorities firewall gateway infrastructure.
• All of the firewalls and management stations are now running the latest version of the software ensuring the authority gateways are secure, stable and running at the most optimised performance.
• Orange Cyberdefnse’s service desk performance ensures that the authority receives 24×7 industry leading support backed up by the vendor.
• Staffordshire County Council has received industry-leading security technical services and supports providing the best value for the authority.