Location: Crawley

Requirement: An IT infrastructure which fitted in with the modern, open plan layout of the new flagship Crawley Head Office. It specifically needed to be fast and future-proofed to complement their cutting-edge approach to the industry.

Equipment: Aastra VoIP Telephone System, Excel Cat 6 LSOH Structured Cabling System, Excel Voice System, Excel Fibre, Excel Cabinets, Cooper B-Line Server Cabinets, Extreme Networks Hardware.

Thomas Eggar Solicitors is one of the largest practices in the South East of England, providing cutting edge, commercially focused legal services through its network of offices in London, Reigate, Gatwick, Worthing and Chichester.

To fit in with this forward-thinking, cutting edge strategy, Thomas Eggar wanted a state-of-the-art voice and data network, which was future-proofed and enhanced the image and brand that they have built up.

Thomas Eggar was relocating two smaller offices around the Crawley area into a flagship new office in the heart of Crawley. They chose a superb building that had been stripped to a shell, which offered a blank canvas for all aspects of the design and build of a new state-of-the-art office.

Thomas Eggar appointed cabling installer TwistedPair to carry out the installation and advise them on the best products to use.

What made the customer choose the product ranges?
TwistedPair are Excel accredited and primarily use the Excel structured cabling system on most of their installations. Thomas Eggar could see the benefit and quality of the product range and when it came head-to-head with the leading competitor brands, the price-to-quality ratio won it for Excel.

Thomas Eggar were originally thinking of installing an alternative hardware solution but after consultation with TwistedPair they were advised to consider the award winning range of products from Extreme Networks, that provide features such as voice-class availability, high performance connectivity and comprehensive security.

Initially Thomas Eggar had been looking at two other brands for a telephone system. TwistedPair, approved Aastra installers, recommended the Aastra Voice Over IP range through Mayflex as they felt Thomas Eggar would benefit more from an Aastra system. After taking the IT director and his team to the Aastra demo suite in Farnborough to show all the features - especially the unified messaging, the decision was made.

The demo alone sold the Aastra range but when a system tailored to Thomas Eggar's requirements was put together, it was the pricing structure that clinched the deal. The system cost was significantly lower than its competitors.

The design of the network
Thomas Eggar's new offices consisted of three floors and the basement. Within the basement the main comms room was to be built, a purpose-built room with a controlled environment and IT build room
adjacent to monitor the activity.

The three floors were to have satellite cabinets. These were connected by a fibre and UTP backbone to the main comms room. The routes were diverse in case of any external threats such as fire etc. Three voice cables of 160 pair each were run to each cabinet to allow at least 72 digital extensions per floor. These were to be presented at Excel RJ45 patch panels.

Each floor, including the basement, had its own private infrastructure of Excel cat6 cabling. Terminated on to black Excel patch panels and cat6 modules that were in floor boxes. Cable management was used every two panels to allow neat patching.

The cabinets were stripped of all panels to allow easy access and keep the cost down for the customer.

In the comms room a 42u Excel data cabinet and voice cabinet were installed. The voice cabinet housed all the three floors voice links presented on beige patch panels.This cabinet was to house the rack mountable Aastra 2065 PBX. This was chosen due to simplicity. No trailing wires would be used as you simply patch directly above, all in one place.

The PBX was then installed with the external cards. Thomas Eggar had two ISDN 30's. The system had analogue xtensions for the faxes and voicemail boxes, 176 digital subscribers, 10 VoIP remote users and 25 Dect subscribers.

This meant a lot of time programming the system to suit Thomas Eggars needs. With some very diversely routed hunt groups and generally a lot of names and details to input.

The Extreme Networks hardware was chosen over HP due to the product benefits and the future proof capabilities of the products. The basement housed the main Extreme Alpine 3800 chassis. From there it was patched over the backbone fibre to the satellite cabinets on each floor. These cabinets were installed with the Extreme Summit 200 switches in a range of 24 and 48 port configurations.

Problems
There were no major problems to overcome because the products were delivered on time and due to the
careful project management there was very little wastage or delays.

The purpose
Thomas Eggar chose their Crawley office to be the flagship of the company because the interior design was modern and open plan. So to fit in with this image, the IT infrastructure needed to be cutting edge. As a result, Category 6 was chosen to support faster technologies using gigabit and provide future proofing.

The design of using satellite cabinets kept the installation easy to manage and any problems arising were very easy to correct on each floor.

The Extreme Networks hardware provided a fast and reliable network, while the Aastra handsets lent themselves to the new age design of the office. The idea was to keep maximum desk space and by using dect and the office 25 this was achieved with style.

Result: A state-of-the-art network and VoIP solution was installed which was within the given time scales and future proofed. The system is running smoothly and has further emphasised Thomas Eggar's image of being a cutting-edge company.