by Comprehensive Integrated Solutions
 

ISS Facility Services Limited (ISS) is a member of one of the world's largest facility service groups, employing over 12,000 people in Hong Kong who are engaged in the front-line delivery of facility support services. In turn, ISS Facility Services owns a number of subsidiary companies that provide specific services to customers, including cleaning services, property management, environmental services, secure forces and hygiene services, among others.
 

With 150 deployment sites and 12,000 employees, everyday a huge amount of mission-critical information is communicated from various sites to the three management offices of ISS. Internet usage becomes more intense and information security is a prime concern. The inability to identify points of failure as well as information leakages may lead to hazardous situations.
 

With a growing number of backend servers and systems, ISS needs a service provider that possesses the acute technology know-how in infrastructure design to assist the company with a wide range of issues, such as monitoring systems integration, data transfer, and networking devices deployment. These demand support tailored for many variations on individual facility constructions.
 

“We interface with many operation sites and premises. Situations are intertwined and problems vary among locations. We have to source a vendor to encounter all of these difficulties efficiently and tackle problem to get straight to the point.” said Mr. Eddy Lam Kai Yip, Head of IT & Business Systems Integration of ISS Facility Services Ltd.
 

To fulfil ever-increasing needs, ISS selected HKNet as of 2003 as its service provider because of its proven stability, reliability and ability to recognise a wide range of technical issues. The solutions include:
 

ISS applied HKNet’s SecureNet IP-VPN service for a fully meshed and failover private network. This MPLS-based IP-VPN offers a completely secure tunnel for data transfer. Information and critical business applications can be shared and accessed securely, easily and remotely within the private network. Integrated with ISS’ existing internal systems, the connectivity enabled the company’s intranet linked smoothly to different deployment sites.

SecureNet also features the capability to switch over automatically to a redundant connectivity that ensures business continuity.
 

HKNet’s Kwai Chung Data Centre acts as a control hub for bandwidth monitoring, email efficiency enhancement and Internet security control. The single firewall at the data centre serves as a front-line security fence for all information passing via the network to various sites. The 24 x 7 x 365 network operations centre (NOC) acts as a remote technical arm of ISS and provides all-around, spontaneous support to the company.
 

HKNet’s technical team custom-designs IT infrastructures for every ISS deployment site that best fits for different situations. Taking the client’s perspective, the team strives to simplify servers and hubs to cater to the growing variety of backend systems without intervention by the existing network environment. This proactive advice and service matched the unique requirements of the premises and saves ISS administrative and operation costs in the long run.
 

“HKNet is now our main connection to the Internet. Our headquarters team is able to work more effectively since our Internet connection issues have been resolved. We are impressed by HKNet’s account servicing and also appreciate the immediate response whenever we call their technical team for support. Since these installations are often time critical, it's very comforting to know that I can get to someone in minutes. We believe this high efficiency helps differentiate us from other competitors," commented Mr. Lam.