Rothbury commits to Network Edge for national converged voice and data network

Rothbury logo
Rothbury Insurance Brokers are one of New Zealand’s largest insurance broking groups with a presence throughout the country. Rothbury provides commercial insurance solutions for small through to large enterprises and protect the assets of thousands of individual clients.

Soon after the merger between what was then Rothbury Insurance Brokers and Commercial and General Insurance Brokers in 2005 Rothbury found a like-minded partner in Network Edge to help build out and manage their national data network. With increasing demands on the network to support the rapidly growing business Rothbury canvassed the market in 2012 and after a robust review process recommitted to Network Edge.

Subsequent to that review Network Edge has worked with Rothbury to consolidate and enhance their network for fast, reliable and cost effective converged voice and data, while also providing efficient and cost effective gateways to the public telephone network and the Internet. All facets of the network are key to supporting the overall mission and goals of the organisation.

Manager Information Services for Rothbury, Sheila Redelinghuys, said: “We needed to consider the current and future capability of our national voice and data network. Our goal was to achieve a managed converged network able to support branch access to centralised applications and the Internet, consolidated PSTN access and inter-branch telephony, plus emerging requirements around web based training and inter-branch video.”

Rothbury needed a network revitalisation as part of their goal. Nearly half of Rothbury’s branches were operating on end-of-life standalone PBXs with separate PSTN access and costly national call plans. Network Edge worked closely with Rothbury to develop and execute a project to migrate all branches to a centralised IP PBX able to leverage inexpensive SIP based PSTN calling and inbuilt telephony DR capabilities. At the same time, the WAN connections and bandwidths to all branches were reviewed and changes implemented to support converged requirements.

Paul Johnson from Network Edge comments: “Our relationship with Rothbury had always been robust and frank. We were delighted to be invited to continue to work with Rothbury to deliver a fully converged network solution. The migration project had its challenges especially around telephony number porting, network wide SIP integration, and DR, but working closely with the client allowed us to collectively deliver to Rothbury’s requirements.”

Rothbury are now positioned to strongly benefit from the converged network and are actively exploring new ways of delivering staff training, video conferencing, and other new technologies which will drive productivity gains across the organisation.