24 October 2002 -- Equant, Paris, has signed a five-year, USD4m contract to link the worldwide sites of Willis Group Holdings with a custom IP VPN solution.
Willis Group is a global insurance broker, developing and delivering professional insurance, reinsurance, financial and human resource consulting and actuarial services to corporations, public entities and institutions around the world.
"Equant's global coverage provides us with the confidence that wherever we do business, we can plug into the network and be supported," said Bob Guill, Global Network manager at Willis. "Developing an IP VPN means that we will be able to operate more cost-effectively with less risk because traffic is transported over a protected and reliable IP network."
With Equant's IP VPN, all of Willis' international data, IP, video and voice traffic can be carried over a single high-speed network.
IP VPN features
- Customers can receive real-time insurance quotes through the network.
- The IP VPN is scalable to support Willis' growing business requirements.
- Any-to-any connectivity, improved performance and integration of legacy systems are supported.
- New business applications can be rapidly deployed over the entire global network.
- Traffic can be prioritized, resulting in optimized application performance and more cost-effective use of bandwidth.
"We shall be using the IP VPN to link our many users worldwide into our central computer services locations in Ipswich, UK, and Nashville, Tennessee," said Martin Taylor, executive director of Information Services for Willis International.
"Shared access to our accounting, general ledger, brokering and prospecting applications will help us to support our multinational clients as well as to cross-sell to them. In addition, the IP VPN provides access to our core intranet, so that our 13,000 employees worldwide will be able to stay in line with our common policies and procedures. The intranet also maintains an extensive database of approved insurers."
Detlef Spang, senior vice president, Western Europe Markets and Sales, Equant, said, "The ability to ensure that global mission-critical communications are communicated swiftly and securely can radically enhance the overall performance of a company."