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Case Studies > Visa
Trescray was selected by Visa EU to provide a structured cabling system at its new offices in London, which provides full network resilience.
The 7,000-outlet structured cabling network supports high-bandwidth traffic for internal systems use at Visa EU. Visa’s transaction processing systems were not affected by this contract.
The priority, explained Visa EU’s John Barcock, was to boost the half-duplex 10Mbit/s offered to staff at the old offices to 100Mbit/s full duplex while guaranteeing continuity of service.
Trescray was selected because of the thoroughness of its proposal and its straightforward manner when dealing with technical queries. John Barcock explained, “Trescray addressed the bid document and gave us confidence with their past track record. They were very professional and impressed all of our project people.”
The building’s fibre backbone was realised by using blown fibre, an advanced and cost-effective system which speeds fibre installation by blowing individual fibres through low friction plastic tubes and offers the option for additional fibres to be installed later as needs increase.
Trescray’s engineers, one of the few teams in the UK authorised to work with blown fibre, used OM3 multimode fibre, the latest generation of fibre which although more expensive than more traditional variants allows more cost-effective electronics to be used. The rest of the network was Category 6 copper, the highest current standard.
“The priority with the network was to deliver certainty in terms of future-proofing and continuity of service,” explained Barcock. Full resilience has been delivered by using twin hub rooms on each floor. Every desk in the building is connected to both hub rooms on its floor. Each of the two hub rooms is then connected by a different riser to the main comms room. If one of the risers has to be taken out of service for any reason, all staff can continue to enjoy full 100Mbit/s service.
Trescray completed the install to a tough six-month schedule by working at night to allow the other site contractors to work flat out by day. Trescray’s teams left at dawn after replacing any raised floor tiles.
“Trescray’s task was particularly tough,” said Barcock, “because there were several changes to the network specification but the engineers were very flexible and finished on time.