O2 has announced that it has won a contract to work with Network Rail to refresh the whole of the company’s current Cisco switch and router estate across 450 sites, including four data centres in the UK. The three year contract with O2 Unify is worth several million pounds. In addition, O2 Unify has been awarded a substantial project to provide the Cisco LAN and WAN infrastructure for Network Rail’s new National Centre, The Quadrant, in Milton Keynes, which will accommodate 3,500 staff from this summer.

Initially O2 Unify will provide support and maintenance services for Network Rail’s current Cisco switch and router estate. Subsequently, O2 Unify will embark on a programme to refresh the Cisco estate, as much of the equipment is moving into its end-of-life cycle and critically will not support the future requirements of the business. The LAN and WAN infrastructure will be a key component that supports the company’s business objective of delivering mission critical network resiliency and availability. The refresh will enable Network Rail to achieve future convergence of services and drive significant efficiencies.

Paul Osborne, Managing Director of O2 Unify said, “Our strong service culture and customer focus from our core mobile business put us in a very strong position to provide wider communications services. We demonstrated strong technical capability in the LAN WAN space as well as good commercial positioning. O2 Unify is viewed as a safe pair of hands to deliver this project and we now provide a whole range of services for Network Rail including project management, business process outsourcing and consultancy as well as products such as WAN, LAN, fixed and mobile. Truly joining their business together.”