Specsavers in £4.5 million Vanco network deal

Specsavers has signed a £4.5 million, five-year contract with virtual network operator (VNO) Vanco, to manage its wide area network (WAN) around the world.

Vanco doesn't own any networking infrastructure. Instead, it organises and manages contracts with local operators, using its own technological solution to link up networks.

Specsavers will use the Vanco system across 800 sites in six countries.

Specsavers had previously been using a virtualised service from a UK operator, and wanted to keep with such a system because it offers scalability at a lower cost as well as the best coverage across different countries.

Ruskin Snow, Specsavers' IT operations manager, said the opticians group looked at a large number of suppliers, focusing on those considered the most innovative by analyst firm Gartner. But every supplier in the top right of Gartner's so-called magic quadrant - the most innovative, cutting-edge companies - had their own networks.

Because of that, "none had coverage a local telco would have - this is the case globally," he said. "No telco has the best coverage in every country you want to go to."

"We could have gone to Telstra in Australia and... it probably would have been cheaper," he said. "But we would have had to deal with telcos in every country. It would have lowered the cost at each site, but the central management would have been higher."

Specsavers will be predominantly using Vanco for data, but Snow said it may eventually move to IP telephony over those networks.

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