London, 17 March 2014
Colt is helping Tourism Ireland attract tourists from all over the world with its Optimum Managed Networking service, allowing people to see and explore the country through a variety of media-rich platforms. The project connects Tourism Ireland’s 20 offices across the globe, providing improved reliability, and since its delivery it has tripled the speed of the network and reduced costs by 30 percent.
With over 8 million visitors to the island of Ireland each year, tourism is one of Ireland’s biggest industries. Marketing to overseas visitors in a consistent and compelling way is key to the ongoing growth of this industry. To make Ireland stand out in today’s media-hungry world, Tourism Ireland needed a network with the bandwidth and reliability to support its increasing use of new marketing channels and rich media formats.
The improvement in network speed and reliability since Colt’s managed networking service has been deployed has been a game-changer for Tourism Ireland’s marketing activities. Tourism Ireland can now scale bandwidth overnight if necessary, rather than waiting weeks or months to install new network resources, providing the IT department with the flexibility to deliver increased network resource as the business needs it.
“Technology is always advancing but in this highly competitive industry we were under pressure to increase bandwidth without increasing costs,” said Conor Marshall, Head of ICT & Product Strategy at Tourism Ireland. “Until we saw Colt’s service offering, we never expected to be able to both triple network speed and reduce costs by 30%. No-one else we looked at could offer anything close to this.”
One of the reasons for the stand-out value of Colt’s managed network solution is it’s geographic reach, but more importantly for Tourism Ireland is the ease of management of one international provider: all of Tourism Ireland’s offices are managed under one SLA.
“Uptime has definitely improved and we’re getting a much more responsive service than we’ve had before,” said Marshall. “This is because Colt has direct control of the network, is really responsive, and has the depth and breadth of expertise we need. Colt’s technical team and project management is of the highest standard and the speed and ease of installation extremely impressive.”
“Like many of our customers, the Tourism Ireland team were under pressure to do more with less. Our Optimum managed networking services have delivered the reliability and speed Tourism Ireland were looking for, with significantly lower costs that now makes it easier for them to deliver resource where and when it is most needed.” said Ben Savage, Regional General Manager UK and Ireland, Colt. “Our approach to delivering service has meant that Tourism Ireland’s IT team can focus on business objectives instead of routine management.”
“All in all, the Colt solution gives us the resources to move forward with our business, and Colt has turned out to be a partner with far more to offer than we’d initially been aware of,” added Marshall. “They’re willing and able to engage with us strategically, which helps us to plan for the future. Colt did come highly recommended to us, and we haven’t been disappointed.”
A case study with Tourism Ireland is available here.
Colt Optimum is the name of the direct-to-enterprise portfolio across IT, Network and Communication Services. These services are differentiated by their unique combination of network reach, integrated technology, service management and commercial flexibility. They complement Colt Ceano, which is designed specifically for Colt’s indirect channel.
About Tourism Ireland
Tourism Ireland is the organisation responsible for promoting the island of Ireland overseas as a leading holiday destination. Tourism is the island of Ireland’s largest indigenous industry; responsible for in excess of 4% of GNP in the Republic of Ireland and employing approximately 200,000 people.
In 2013, we welcomed an estimated 8 million overseas visitors to the island of Ireland, delivering revenue of approximately €3.64 billion. Overseas tourism business accounts for 59% of all tourism revenue.
Tourism Ireland’s international website is www.ireland.com, currently rolling out in 11 different language versions for over 30 individual markets around the world.
About Colt
Colt is the information delivery platform, enabling its customers to deliver, share, process and store their vital business information. An established leader in delivering integrated computing and network services to major organisations, midsized businesses and wholesale customers worldwide. Colt operates in 22 European countries with a 46,000km European network and transatlantic network capacity. Colt has metropolitan area networks in 41 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 19,800 buildings and 20 carrier neutral Colt data centres.
In 2010, the Colt Data Centre Services business was launched to deliver innovative high quality data centre solutions at a Colt or customer site. Our innovative data centres are rapid to deploy, flexible and highly efficient.
In addition to its direct sales capability, Colt has four indirect channels to market; Agent, Franchise, Distributor and Wholesale which includes Carriers, Service Providers, VARs and Voice Resellers.
Colt is listed on the London Stock Exchange (COLT).
Colt press contacts
Paula Muezerie
DDI: +44 (0) 20 7947 1035
Mobile: +44 (0) 785 5301 078
Email: paula.muezerie@colt.net
Octopus, Katie Potts
T: +44 (0)8453 700 655
Mobile: +44 (0)7710 977 249
Email: Katie@weareoctopusgroup.net
Tourism Ireland press contact
Sinéad Grace
Tel: 087-685 9027
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