Transformation programme to increase water authority’s IT flexibility and resilience

Southern Water is one of the largest water authorities in England and is responsible for water services across Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, West Sussex, East Sussex and Kent. Southern Water’s transformation programme is centred on developing resilience across the company’s business, corporate and financial operations. A key element of this programme will see MTI transition Southern Water from a fully third-party managed datacentre to a self-managed software-defined datacentre. 

 

MTI is using its proven datacentre modernisation capabilities to design and build two state-of-the-art datacentres in collocated facilities, including the provision of an interconnected dual-fibre network, internet services and on-site services. A new hyper-converged compute, storage and network architecture will provide Southern Water with a flexible IT platform for efficient and effective service delivery, including the capability to manage private/public cloud infrastructure in the future.

 

The new datacentre will support Southern Water’s existing Windows Server and Linux environments, as well as core business applications including, SAP, Microsoft Exchange and Oracle Databases. This will be underpinned with intelligent data backup and restore, data replication, and data archiving. 

Following national guidance from the industry regulator, OFWAT, and the National Cyber Security Centre regarding the protection of critical infrastructure, Southern Water is also looking to embed greater resilience and hardened cyber security across its IT estate. As such, MTI will be using its significant security expertise to design and implement additional layered security architecture on behalf of Southern Water.

 

“Sustained investment in technology is fundamental to increasing our efficiency, improving our capabilities, and enhancing our resilience against the emerging threat of cyberattack,” said Steve Kane, Senior Category Manager – Corporate Services, Southern Water. “MTI stood out as our preferred technology partner as it was most aligned to our strategic and technical vision. Through a combination of best-of-breed technology and security expertise, we are confident we will have a future-proof and resilient IT infrastructure that will provide us with more control and flexibility. This will enable us to enhance service delivery to both our employees and customers.”

 

Angelo Di Ventura, Director at MTI, said, “This is a significant contract for MTI as it showcases our complete portfolio of datacentre, security and managed services capabilities. For large organisations such as Southern Water it is becoming imperative they have modern, secure and agile IT platforms that help them remain both competitive and safe. We are delighted to have been selected as Southern Water’s technology partner of choice.”