Research Machines

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Research Machines Gives Students Access to Global Educational Resources

Research Machines (RM) is a leading supplier of software, services and systems to educational institutions in the United Kingdom. The company serves 11,500 sites in 35 countries and has 1,200 employees. Annual sales are £220 million.

Challenge

Research Machines (RM) needed an industry leader to provide fast, reliable Internet connectivity to support its key purpose - to connect thousands of schools around the UK to global online information. Because many educational Web sites are hosted in the US or elsewhere overseas, international connectivity from a global provider was a top priority. The comprehensive solution needed to offer a fast response time, global reach and a scalable framework.

Solution

RM chose Sprint as its provider. By connecting RM to SprintLink™, the Sprint Tier 1 IP network, Sprint helped RM deliver reliable Internet service to more than 8,000 educational institutions. As a result, these schools are now enjoying high-speed Internet connectivity.

Over one quarter of the world's Internet traffic connects directly on the SprintLink OC192 IP backbone. Moreover, many commonly accessed Web sites reside on the Sprint network. Because of this, Sprint can provide RM fast, dependable access to Internet content over a majority of Sprint-owned lines. And with industry-leading Sprint service level agreements, including low inter-regional and intra-regional latency guarantees, RM can rest assured its Internet connectivity will be available.

RM's business has seen an exponential growth in requirements from the schools they serve. The initial Sprint-provided solution included 45 Mbps Internet transit capabilities. After experiencing the high performance service Sprint provided, RM more than tripled its capacity to a 155 Mbps solution, all within a year's time. And the growth will continue beyond that.

Bottom line

For RM, the result was higher-quality, fully scalable connectivity. With a variety of speeds ranging from 64 Kbps to STM1, this scalable, reliable solution from Sprint is geared to meet RM's growing IP connectivity requirements, both today and tomorrow.

Why Sprint?

When you choose Sprint, you're in good company. 95% percent of the FORTUNE 1000® chooses Sprint for combinations of data, Internet, voice and wireless solutions. When you select Sprint, you're doing business with a global company that:

• Has a rich heritage more than a century strong and remains one of the most financially stable companies in the telecom industry
• Provides multinational enterprises, Internet service providers and carriers global data and Internet services in more than 100 countries worldwide
• Has won industry and customer accolades for service reliability, cost effectiveness, customer satisfaction and product innovation
• Is committed to developing solutions that can transform the way you get business done

"Given the economic climate, choosing a new, long-term IP transit partner that was stable was a challenging task. Sprint fits the bill." Rob Sirs, group products & services director, Research Machines

FORTUNE 1000® is a registered trademark of FORTUNE Magazine, a division of Time inc.

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