• South East Water turns to Mobility XE Mobile VPN to keep support staff, field crews connected
SEATTLE, WA, May 11, 2010 -- NetMotion Wireless, a leading provider of mobile workforce productivity and management software, helped South East Water, a utility company based in the UK, keep its operations running through some of the worst winter weather to ever hit the UK.
Heavy snow across England on January 5-6 was followed by a plunge in temperatures on January 7-9, dropping below zero in southern England. This was followed by several more weeks of snowfall and extreme temperatures. A nationwide shortage of road salt made driving extremely treacherous, and the company's headquarters and its IT support staff was snowed in. But the support staff was able to continue to support the company's efforts and maintain reliable connections throughout the emergency, including voice calls over the Internet, thanks to the award winning mobile VPN, Mobility XE, from NetMotion Wireless.
According to David Chung, IT Services Manager, "We were able to run our entire helpdesk service from home. Our Support Analysts all logged on and used our Cisco Softphones running over Mobility XE to handle calls into our helpdesk call centre. They were able to access all the tools they needed to provide remote support, and we didn't have to worry about staff making dangerous journeys into work."
In addition, Martin Giel, Operations Systems Manager adds, "One of our staff members was stuck in Berlin due to the weather, logged in over Mobility XE, and ran a critical report."
Most recently, South East Water upgraded to version 9.0 of Mobility XE, which was released in January 2010, to take advantage of new device authentication features to tighten security. The new capability adds an additional authentication factor to offer even tighter security and ensure that in the future, only specific trusted South East Water-provisioned devices are able to access their network.
Using Mobility XE in innovative ways is nothing new for the company. South East Water uses the mobile VPN from NetMotion Wireless to deliver reliable connections to their field engineers, and arrive at novel and inexpensive means to overcome intermittent cellular data-network connectivity. They have installed Wi-Fi access points at more than 100 existing telemetry sites such as pumping stations, valve stations and other key points of infrastructure. The 350 employees in the field are able to roam seamlessly among the cellular networks and fixed Wi-Fi access points, reliably accessing their GIS mapping, work-management and other applications. Mobility XE switches to the higher-speed Wi-Fi access points when they are in range, without any intervention by the user and without disrupting active sessions. In addition to the faster, more reliable connectivity, the company achieved an 85% reduction in cellular-access costs for some workers.
"South East Water has always been out front in using mobile technology," said Pam Cory, Vice President of Marketing, NetMotion Wireless. "They have done many innovative things with our software to help enhance the performance of their field force. Allowing their support personnel to work from home to access business critical systems, enabled by NetMotion Mobility XE, is another example. We are glad that we helped them survive what forecasters are calling a record breaking winter."
Additional information about NetMotion Wireless can be found at www.netmotionwireless.com.
About NetMotion Wireless
NetMotion Wireless develops software to enable businesses and agencies to maintain and optimize connections to applications as their mobile workers change locations or networks multiple times each day. Based in Seattle, Washington, NetMotion Wireless Mobility XE is an award-winning mobile VPN designed to enhance mobile worker productivity. Mobility XE is deployed at more than 1,600 of the world's most respected organizations across multiple industries including utilities, healthcare, insurance, communications, public safety, local government, transportation, field service and many others. For more information about NetMotion Wireless or to evaluate Mobility XE at no charge, please visit www.netmotionwireless.com or call (206) 691-5500.
About South East Water
South East Water supplies top quality drinking water to 2.1 million customers in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire, U.K. Each day the company supplies 565 million litres of drinking water from its water treatment works, along more than 14,000 kilometres of water mains to customers' taps. The supply draws from rivers, reservoirs and underground aquifers and covers a supply area of 5,657 square kilometres.
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