Colt lands €495,000 IT deal with Aon


7 May 2008

Insurance firm Aon Corporation has retained Colt Telecom Ireland to oversee its IT requirements after a move to new premises, in a deal worth €495,000 over three years.

Following a tender, Colt was retained to facilitate the transfer of all Aon’s communications requirements to the new premises on Joyce Street in Dublin, without impacting the daily workflow.

Aon said Colt was able to satisfy a number of core business requirements, such as providing a secure and futureproofed communications infrastructure, facilitating high bandwidth data connectivity, as well as a fully managed voice over IP (VoIP) system across a number of European locations.

The new premises is directly connected to Colt’s pan-European network, providing high-speed access to corporate IT systems and data transfer between numerous Aon sites in Europe.

The telecoms firm’s ability to offer a managed VoIP service allowed Aon’s Irish operation to come on stream with other Aon offices across Europe, including its corporate headquarters in the Netherlands. This follows a strategic decision within Aon to embrace IP-based voice solutions across its international network of offices.

“When you consider the extent of Aon’s network of offices across Europe, our ability to provide VoIP connectivity on an international basis is a huge endorsement of our international operations,” said Gary Keogh, managing director at Colt Telecom Ireland.

“From a logistical viewpoint, the move from three established offices to one new centre was daunting, but Colt provided us with the peace of mind that the telecommunications facets of the move were in hand from day one,” said Brian Lynch, head of IT, Aon.

“The ability of Colt to offer a turnkey approach to the transfer and set up of our communications infrastructure is the foremost reason we retained its services. In addition, its ability to provide VoIP phone services across multiple international locations allowed us to meet our strategic requirement to adopt VoIP technology across our business.”

By Niall Byrne

Pictured from left are Fergus Innes, director of corporate sales,
Colt Telecom Ireland; Brian Lynch, head of IT, Aon; and Gary Keogh,
managing director, COLT Telecom Ireland