Starling Bank is one of the largest online banks in the UK, serving over 4.1 million personal and business accounts and on hand to help customers through live digital channels, 24 hours a day. You can imagine the sheer volume of data their connectivity has to handle, and the tight security every byte and bit demands.
Rapid connection: clearly, we were on a deadline. The network had to be up within weeks, to welcome hundreds of new employees on site, on time.
Best of breed security: Starling’s digital ecosystem is built from scratch with some of the world’s best banking security. The network needed to match up.
Future scalability: as data volumes inevitably grow and network traffic increases, that just in time connection will need to be in it for the long haul.
Having Hypercity status, Manchester is already incredibly well-connected by Elevate. Our own fibre and rooftop wireless network across the city, coupled with our in-house team of engineers meant we didn’t need to wait around for other providers; Starling’s deadlines immediately became our own, and we completed a full fibre DIA installation into the building and up five floors in just seven days. A huge contrast to the 90 day industry average lead time, and testament to our commitment to service.
Starling Bank required 1Gbps with future capability, so we installed a 10Gbps bearer to create the last internet connection Starling will ever need for the length of its ten year lease at Barings’ Landmark.
Security was obviously paramount. We implemented a best-of-breed, on-premise Fortinet firewall with unified threat protection against spyware, malware and DDOS. Fully Elevate managed, the firewall provides real time updates to mitigate new threats as they arise and offer critical protection for network traffic.
Starling took nest in Manchester, getting the office open in time, with connection set up and secured within a week. Dedicated bandwidth, 24/7 support, best-of-breed security and a strong uptime guarantee give total reassurance to the team at Starling and ensure their customers get the unrivalled banking, support and security experience they’re accustomed to.
With a 10Gbps bearer installed, Starling is set up to scale operations in Manchester as and when it needs to. And a four hour fault SLA - only achievable because the network is entirely our own - means the critical nature of Starling’s systems and data won’t be compromised.
