Macmillan

As one of the most recognisable charities in the UK, Macmillan Cancer Support is dedicated to helping people living with cancer.

There are more than 3 million people living with cancer in the UK. This is expected to rise to 4 million by 2030. Supporting people that are impacted by cancer physically, financially and emotionally is incredibly important, and that's exactly what Macmillan do tirelessly, all year round.

In 2022 alone, Macmillan supported an estimated 2 million people living with cancer. They gave person-to-person support to approximately 730,000 people, distributed over £19 million in Macmillan Grants, and raised a remarkable £221.2 million through supporters and fundraisers.

An organisation operating on this scale, and with this level of widespread importance, has a significant reliance on its core technology. This enables the good work that the Macmillan team undertake nationwide.

Getting all mission-critical infrastructure out of legacy on-site comms rooms and into a high-performance data centre is a huge step towards future-proofing and streamlining operations, which ultimately leads to a better experience for those reliant on support from the Macmillan team.

“

Finding a data centre operator that could offer us the level of assistance we required to get our consolidation project off the ground wasn't easy, but Netwise were able to get properly involved, even working directly with our carrier to design and implement what we needed to connect into our existing network.

T O'Neill, Macmillan Cancer Support

The technical team at Macmillan approached Netwise in early 2024, seeking a new home in which to consolidate their existing infrastructure, used to keep the backend of the organisation working around the clock.

Over the course of the next few months, the Netwise team worked with Macmillan to build out a suitable colocation solution for their requirements, both now and looking ahead. This also required thought for diversely connecting them into their existing MPLS network, involving input from a third party carrier and the network design team at Netwise.

Ultimately, a set of diverse Layer 2 psuedowires were utilised in connecting Macmillan into their MPLS network, making use of the Netwise multi-location metro network for delivery of this critical connection service.

Moving away from on-premise service delivery and into a purpose-built data centre has allowed the Macmillan team to focus more completely on its core activities, freeing up technical time to be better spent elsewhere. This is a fundamental advantage of outsourced colocation, as it lubricates the technical gears within an organisation, avoiding the time and costs associated with core utility maintenance.

At an essential level, the service employed by Macmillan is a straightforward one; rack space and power, with diverse Layer 2 backhaul to break into their existing MPLS network upstream. This is the type of service we deploy very frequently, for all manner of clients around the world. However there were some additional service components which tailored the overall solution to their exacting requirements.

Macmillan required a little more from their PDUs, and so opted for our stage one upgrade path, to make use of our APC AP8853 Smart PDUs. These PDUs allow Macmillan's in-house technical team to remotely interact with the outlets, and also ingest monitoring data directly, without needing to check the graphing data we make available through our customer portal.

Further to this, Macmillan also made use of our flexible power availability, upgrading their total commit after an initial run-in period, which allowed for real-world running conditions to be confirmed ahead of making a final contractual commit to usage. This can be very helpful when consolidating multiple systems, which result in too many adjustments to accurately pre-calculate final power consumption.

The team at Macmillan all share a common goal - to provide support to those impacted by cancer. That sits front and centre of everything they do. By outsourcing their critical IT infrastructure to Netwise, they're free to allocate more time to this common goal, which results in a better level of support for those that need it.

Want to talk to our team about designing and deploying your own colocation service? Get in touch with us today, and we'll be happy to discuss this with you.

You can donate to Macmillan Cancer Support by clicking here.

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