Brewery splits up telephony

Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) has called time on in-house management of its national voice network. The brewery announced last week that joint venture partners Cable and Wireless Communications (CWC) and Vodafone are to manage its voice telephony. S&N said no single vendor could provide the service it needed.

Ian Butterworth, IS director for S&N, said he had no qualms about passing management to a third party. "We've outsourced voice telephony for improved service levels and functionality flexibility, he said.

The £17m deal centres on CWC and Vodafone implementing virtual private networks (VPNs), call management, voicemail and private branch exchange services for S&N's fixed and mobile users.

"We wanted a stable and flexible network and if we open a new site alterations are easier because it is managed," Butterworth said.

The company rolled out a VPN to overcome integration difficulties in the wake of its recent acquisition of the Courage pub chain. Butterworth said the VPN means sites can be viewed as a single entity and connections can share applications such as voice messaging.

Duncan Black, director of corporate network strategy for CWC said S&N's acquisitions had led to problems integrating telecommunications systems, so it looked to standardise with a single managed service.