14 March 2013: Kcom, part of the KCOM Group, was recently selected as preferred bidder by East Sussex County Council (ESCC) to provide a hosted and managed voice communications service for the Link.

The Link is a collaborative IT programme for public sector organisations across Sussex and surrounding areas. The Consortium, which is governed by its stakeholders, includes ESCC, Brighton & Hove City Council, Sussex Police, East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, District Councils, the NHS and education organisations. ESCC led the procurement and will manage the contract with Kcom, on behalf of Link.

Afshin Attari, Director of Public Sector and PSN at Kcom, says: “This contract is very significant for us; it shows the PSN model in action and demonstrates that the public sector is looking to Next Generation Managed Services to create better ways to connect organisations and communities across the region. It’s great to work with a Consortium that is confident with the benefits that can be delivered using a cloud based solution.”

Kcom will be providing the cloud based solution on top of Link’s existing connectivity infrastructure, for a period of five years. East Sussex County Council is the lead for the Link regional PSN, for which the contract was signed in December 2012. The Council’s network migration, along with that of Brighton & Hove City Council and others, is already under way.

Tony Summers, CIO at East Sussex County Council says: “The main reason why we procured a PSN was to bring our public services together. The voice contract that Kcom will be delivering will allow them to communicate via the cloud, which will be much cheaper than running and maintaining the necessary equipment on site. It also brings better services within reach of smaller organisations within the Consortium.”

Kcom is using Workplaces, its new suite of hosted, managed communication services, powered by Cisco technologies, to deliver the solution. Workplaces provides organisations with a range of subscription based services including telephony, unified communications and contact centre which gives them the capability to transform their customer contact or business collaboration capabilities. Using a flexible costing model, Kcom has been able to remove many of the barriers associated with investing in capital intensive on-premise solutions.