1. New and used car dealer Citygate was being hindered by a
cumbersome and expensive IT infrastructure. The company
wanted to move to a centrally managed cloud-based system
in order to reduce costs, simplify IT management and
increase the flexibility of its business operation.
“TOO SLOW, TOO OLD”
Established in 2006, Citygate is a specialist dealer of new
and used Volkswagen and Skoda cars in Greater London,
Hertfordshire and Middlesex. The company has nine sites
located in Capitol Way, Chalfont, Colindale, High Wycombe,
Ruislip and Watford.
Citygate had a typical legacy IT infrastructure with a
dedicated phone switch in each individual site and
networking and integrated on-site systems provided by a
vendor. However, this system was proving too burdensome
for Citygate. The system was costly to manage and was also
inflexible meaning it was difficult and expensive to establish
new sites. Network bandwidth was also an issue, with each
site only having a 260kb/s connection.
“Our business was being severely hampered
by an IT infrastructure that was fundamentally
too slow and too old. We needed to move to a
new set up that would give us the bandwidth
and the scalability we needed whilst also
greatly simplifying the overall management of
the network and reducing our costs.”
Peter Dickey, Commercial Director, Citygate
In order to achieve the desired scalability, Citygate decided
to move to a cloud-based infrastructure combined with IP
telephony. Citygate approached Node4 to implement this
CITYGATE
DELIVERING FLEXIBILITY AND GROWTH
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0845 123 2222 or email us: info@node4.co.uk
infrastructure overhaul and bring all of its IT provisions into
one central point rather than having separate infrastructure
at each individual site.
“Finding an IT supplier who could become
a long term partner for the business was
crucial and Node4 were recommended to us
by another dealer. In speaking with Node4, it
was clear that not only could they support our
immediate upgrade requirements, but also
take in to consideration our future ambitions.
Node4 delivered a clear infrastructure plan
that was capable of scaling up further down
the line to accommodate future growth and
changing requirements.”
Peter Dickey, Commercial Director, Citygate
MANAGED TRANSITION
Node4 provided its private cloud-based solution n4Cloud,
with connectivity for all voice and data traffic to Citygate’s
nine sites, delivered via its high-speed, secure and highly
resilient MPLS network. The infrastructure is based on high
performance Juniper Networks SRX series routers.
Telephony switches were removed from each site and
replaced by a central hosted switch at Node4’s Derby
data centre. Citygate’s email server and all other critical
equipment was also relocated, benefiting from central
management.
Node4 managed the process of rolling out fibre-to-the-
premises for all of Citygate’s sites and procured, installed
and set up an end-to-end Cisco IP telephony system onsite.
This included Cisco 2960 Power-over-Ethernet switches,
delivering phone and PC connectivity to each desk with
one cable - halving cabling requirements. All phones were
also replaced with Cisco IP phones to enable staff to have
location-independent contact numbers.
The whole switchover to all nine physical locations,
encompassing over 200 users, was managed by a dedicated
account manager, and the on-site installation was completed
during out of hours to minimise downtime for Citygate.
IMMEDIATE BENEFITS
The new infrastructure is now completely managed

2. node4.co.uk 0845 123 2222
externally by Node4, delivering significant performance
benefits to Citygate. Simply by having MPLS connectivity,
each site now has at least 10Mbs connections - dramatically
improving the speed of the network for the whole group.
Central management of the system has also meant fewer
glitches and less downtime. The switch to IP telephony also
brought instant cost savings.
The success of the upgrade and the ‘plug and play’
architecture established by Node4 has also enabled Citygate
to seamlessly open two new locations. Once the network
circuit is live and the hardware is in place, a new site can
be brought online at the touch of a button. At the two new
locations, the hardware install and set up was completed
within 24 hours once the network was live.
By centrally managing the infrastructure, Node4 also
gives Citygate access to highly qualified support staff and
technical assistance that the company would simply not be
able to maintain in-house. Cisco-qualified engineers and
network support are available as and when required.
For the senior management team, having direct access to
a dedicated account manager at Node4 has proved to be
invaluable in terms of speed of response and ease.
Citygate is now looking at rolling out a fully cloud-based
solution for its email and business applications to further
enhance its IT service delivery and flexibility.
“Node4 is one of our key business partners
and the team is fully integrated with Citygate.
The service levels are exceptional - if there is
a bottleneck these days, it will be with external
services, such as fibre providers. The value
Node4 has delivered to our business was
summed up during a recent acquisition of a
new business. For once, IT was not the main
topic of negotiation. Instead we were all able
to completely focus on the commercials of the
deal, keeping in mind what was best for the
company. After the experience of working with
Node4, I can’t see us ever not working with
them and we are all looking forward to future
technology upgrades”
Peter Dickey, Commercial Director, Citygate