A conversation, during a late afternoon at BETT 99 held at London’s Olympia, with Brian Durrant of the Kingston ICT team saw the beginning of one of ‘Compaq Preferred Education Partner’ Atomwide’s most successful customer relationships of recent times.

The London Borough of Kingston’s Education IT department is typical of Atomwide’s more traditional customer base: a large support organisation responsible for managing and supporting curriculum IT facilities for schools in its local area. To promote recent government initiatives and offer schools a secure and appropriate route for accessing the Internet, Kingston launched KingsNet, an Intranet serving over 100 schools via a network of ‘always on’ leased lines and dial-up ISDN connections.

During February 1999, a series of planning meetings were held between Atomwide consultants and the Kingston ICT team. These discussions covered issues such as the facilities that KingsNet would need to provide, the likely demand for these services, the specifications of the central hardware that would consequently be required, support and management of the system, and the on-going running costs. Kingston LEA personnel co-ordinated the activities of BT and Telewest who provided leased lines to the schools, plus Caltell (now Xpert Systems) who provided the internal infrastructure including extensive data routing systems, while Atomwide provided the Compaq NT servers and configured the mechanics of the KingsNet delivery platform, including its two Proliant 1600 Intranet/Internet servers and the impressive Proliant 3000-based 22,000 user email system. With the LEA providing the content and management support alongside Atomwide, the project took shape over the Spring and Summer of 1999, culminating in an official mayoral launch at the end of that September. KingsNet has provided a 24 hour service ever since.

At the launch, and when later asked about Atomwide’s rôle in KingsNet, Brian Durrant, then Head of Educational ICT Services at Kingston publicly praised Atomwide for ‘...bringing expertise, commitment and excellent value for money to the design and implementation of the email and web server solutions.’

Brian Durrant has since become Director of the London Grid for Learning Project, while the experience gained from this challenging project has already helped other LEA’s create similar, and even more demanding, systems and continues to provide an excellent basis for on-going development and expansion.