REFERENCES
The Situation
Founded in 1999, Merlin Entertainments Group Ltd is a leading name in family entertainment offering attractions such as Sealife centres and Dungeon sites. With over 20 different attractions in eight countries across Europe, Merlin is Europe's biggest multi-site attraction operator and employs up to 1,000 staff. company runs three dungeons sites which attract hundreds of visitors a year.
Paul Sylvester, IT Director at Merlin Entertainments recalls that:
"The ability to respond to media demands in real-time is paramount to our business. It is vital that we have an internet connection that can handle bandwidth-heavy applications such as presentation documents".
In addition to this, the dungeon staff regularly used the Internet as a source of inspiration for marketing and PR strategies and to stay abreast of their competitors.
The Solution
Through its partnership with Merlin Entertainments, IZR Solutions had established a sound and reliable reputation with Merlin for competitive pricing and consistently high levels of service. When the company looked to upgrade its exchange servers to ISDN, IZR Solutions was the immediately obvious choice.
Recognising the streamlined benefits of ADSL for communication between his dungeon sites, Sylvester was delighted when IZR Solutions was able to provide the total Internet service to its business customers. IZR Solutions focussed on producing a solution that was relevant to Merlin's real business requirements, utilising their resources to work as together as one single company.
The Installation
When ADSL became available in London and Poole, the company turned to IZR Solutions to install it in both sites. Replacing existing iSDN connections with ADSL the whole process of installation was over in two hours. Merlin Entertainments ran a pilot scheme to measure the success of performance and were more than satisfied that ADSL was everything they hoped it would be. IZR Solutions offered the company a team of highly skilled technical experts to provide support to Merlin's staff as they realised the many benefits of the new ADSL system.
The Result
The results were outstanding. Not only did ADSL reduce the cost to a tenth of the ISDN service, but also the higher bandwidth greatly reduced transmission time.
”Broadband has changed the way Merlin uses the Internet. Download times are now super fast and with the amount of staff becoming more web literate, ADSL has removed the fears of costly monthly bills. IZR Solutions have developed a system for us that generates a real return on our investment”, Sylvester said.
The same pilot scheme was then introduced to Edinburgh with the same result, and then to Birmingham and to the rest of Europe.