Remote working solution for FTSE100 company due to the COVID-19 pandemic
1. Requirement / Problem
Covid-19 created a huge problem for many companies as the world went into lockdown, as infrastructure and security processes at the time were not capable of handling every department and user working from home.
Our client, like other large blue-chip companies, rely on a combination of internal and cloud services that their more than 12,000 users have different levels of access to, from geographically dispersed teams across Europe. A variety of solutions were required to handle multiple departments with individual business unit requirements and criteria.
2. Hubbado Solution
The head of networks reached out to hubbado to review the capacity to handle large numbers of users being logged in during the daytime. Each business unit and department had its own set of requirements for their team to continue to work as usual.
There was no time for a full design, implementation and test plan, with 10 days to get the solution in place, so we had to build and develop tactical solutions using agile methodology.
We leveraged our community to source an expert team who had prior experience working with the client, so they could hit the ground running: 2 CCIE network engineers to work on the corporate solution, and 1 CCIE engineer to work on the offshore development centre.
We quickly investigated all available options and ruled out solutions that were unsuitable. The remaining solutions were classified as tactical, short-term or strategic, and we noted resource availability, implementation complexity, security, performance and supportability.
3. Results and Conclusion
Hubbado subject matter experts were able to liaise with internal departments to quickly understand the technical and business requirements of the teams, and the skills matrix needed to deliver a complex technical project at short notice:
- The goal of the project was met in just 4 days
- A solution was built and tested for a small user group in 5 days in an iterative process
- Equipment was procured, ordered and delivered within 5 days
- The first complete office work from home trial was completed by day 6
- A complete test involving 95% of the organisation was completed by day 8
- 11 days after being engaged, the COVID-19 response and government strategy changed, and working from home was enforced for all non-critical users on a permanent basis
- The offshore development centre continued working with no interruption by the changes