Queensgate Shopping Centre
This case study highlights our consistent ability to meet our client’s specific needs and solve their pain points. We deliver a high level of technical expertise to the retail industry with carefully designed bespoke and cost-effective solutions. In this case, we mobilised switches, managed the network and deployed technology focused on the client’s needs over a three-year period.
Queensgate
Queensgate shopping centre, located in the city of Peterborough, contains over 100 stores and 2300 car park spaces. The shopping centre has a diverse range of tenants including food vendors, independent businesses, big-name retailers, and more. They host regular events for their various visitor demographics, which result in community experiences and increased footfall. In 2015, £30 million was invested into the Queensgate refurbishment project, which included an extension as well as a new network of Cisco technology. Managing the diverse needs of this client and each tenant brings layers of complexity that our team understands from their years of retail industry experience.
The challenges
Cisco networks
Queensgate shopping centre was previously owned by Hammerson who had installed the Cisco network. This highly technical network had more features than necessary for its purpose at the shopping centre. Cisco is more suited for high-level or high-enterprise units, which wasn’t appropriate for Queensgate. They required something designed perfectly for their needs, with full support and replacement switches on demand so there’s no major downtime.
Expenditure
Queensgate was determined to reduce its services bill. With Cisco, they were paying an annual bill for the smart network to maintain their warranty. Queensgate’s switches also required replacing after meeting their end of life and they wanted to ensure they were going for the right switches before repurchasing them.
What Queensgate required
Queensgate required a resilient solution that was tailored around what they use day to day to prevent unnecessary expenditure. They needed technical retail experts to drive these changes smoothly so to avoid downtime for tenants and shoppers.
ITVET’s solution
ITVET swapped Cisco for HP Aruba Fibre. There isn’t a perfectly equivalent product that is the same as Cisco, so we designed a bespoke network for Queensgate with HP technology.