News
Lasers improve communications and minimise maintenance for gift experience company
The SAS Group installs line-of-sight cameras to connect Activity Superstore’s offices
London, 4 September 2007 - The SAS Group, an international provider of IP-based network and communication infrastructure services, today announced that it has completed the installation of high-speed, line-of-sight laser cameras to connect the data networks of the two offices of the gift experience company, Activity Superstore. The offices, located on either side of a busy road in Saffron Walden, Essex, were previously connected by a WiFi link, but this was prone to interference and interruptions in connectivity. Since the new system was installed, Activity Superstore has experienced a dramatic increase in available bandwidth and performance, improving business efficiency and reducing the burden of maintenance on the company’s limited IT resources.
Activity Superstore sells a wide range of gift experiences, with something to suit everyone, from adventure holidays for children, to romantic getaways for couples, and helicopter and Ferrari rides for daredevils. These gifts are primarily sold through major high street stores, but Activity Superstore also has a corporate service through which businesses can purchase gifts to motivate and incentivise staff.
Since it began in 1997, the company has experienced phenomenal growth and it now arranges days out for more than 100,000 customers a year. However, the day-to-day running of the business was suffering as the previous communications link between the company’s two offices was unreliable and could not support the near continuous flow of data including emails, database files and time-critical transaction information. The WiFi link often crashed midway through a transaction, and a significant amount of time was spent restoring the connection and maintaining the system.
To overcome the problem, and to ensure that no customers missed out on their gifts due to flaws in the system, the company decided to upgrade its connectivity. At the same time, Activity Superstore had also recently employed a new IT and systems manager, Stuart Martin. Martin had a long-standing relationship with the SAS Group and had worked on a number projects with the company in previous posts. Knowing the SAS Group’s expertise and capacity to offer independent advice and recommend solutions tailored to customer needs, the choice of partner for this project was an obvious one.
After consulting Activity Superstore and weighing up the options, the SAS Group initially suggested the installation of a physical fibre link between the two buildings. However, while this was the most cost-effective solution, the local council would not grant planning permission. After considering the possibility of a VPN, which was deemed too expensive, the SAS Group finally recommended the installation of line-of-sight laser cameras. By deploying a camera on the outside of each building, Activity Superstore could benefit from a reliable and consistent throughput of 100 MB and have a system requiring virtually no maintenance.
“We need to deliver on our customer promises, we simply can’t run the risk of a network outage,” said Martin. “Having worked with the SAS Group on several other successful installations, it was a given that I would again ask for its help and expertise for this project. The project was completed on time and on budget, making the whole process as simple as possible for me and freeing up my time to deal with more pressing IT matters.”
The SAS Group installed two high-speed free space optic cameras from MRV Communications. All network traffic transferred between the two offices is now converted into an invisible beam of light that is sent through the air from camera to camera and then converted back to data before being delivered to its final destination. The new system has not only dramatically improved connectivity, it has also freed up valuable time, that was previously spent repairing and maintaining the WiFi link, which can now be dedicated to other IT projects.
“It is essential to approach every project with an open mind as often the most obvious solution just won’t be feasible, as we found at Activity Superstore,” said Charles Davis, CEO of the SAS Group. “By taking a consultative approach and making time from the outset to understand a customer’s business requirements and the specifics of their project, we can make informed recommendations about the best communications systems for their particular organisation.”
Line-of-sight cameras offer low cost and low maintenance data connectivity solutions for businesses with high bandwidth requirements. Because they are available at capacities of up to one Gigabit, laser-based networks are ideally suited to companies that run bandwidth-hungry data applications, such as large databases. They also offer a quick and easy way to extend network connectivity, so are often deployed to link new offices or teams in rapidly expanding organisations. Furthermore, many businesses opt to install line-of-sight cameras as part of their backup strategy; in the event that the primary network connection fails, work can carry on unaffected if there is automatic failover to a laser-based network.