Reach Plc

Remote work saves Mirror publisher £8m each year

A pile of newspapers.

The customer

The UK’s largest independent news publisher, known for the Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Star, OK! Magazine and regional titles nationwide.

 

…we adopted a hybrid working model, following employee feedback largely in favour of retaining more remote working options post-Covid. This allowed us to streamline our property portfolio and reduce those costs, while also providing many of our teams with greater flexibility.”

Reach Plc, 2023 Annual Report

The challenge

  • Enable 3,000+ staff to work remotely while maintaining security, visibility and control.
  • Connect multiple wide-area networks and public clouds.
  • Minimise disruption, especially during critical times of day and high-profile events.
  • Shift towards a ‘Zero Trust’ approach to security.

 

The solution

  • Managed remote access service, with integrated web filtering and logging.
  • Built on dedicated hardware, hosted across multiple data centres to support high-availability, and integrated with Reach’s identity management system.
  • Connects WANs, public clouds, 14 office/printing sites, data centres, remote users and key suppliers. Multiple links to each WAN and each public cloud enhance resilience.
  • Patched during narrow pre-agreed windows. Change freezes protect high-profile events.
  • 24/7 support. Direct access to seasoned engineers who know Reach’s setup well.
  • Equipment is hosted in secure data centres by ISO 27001 certified Syntura.
  • Zero Trust capabilities add extra security and oversight options.

 

 

Why Syntura?

A combination of reasons:

  • Track Record: Syntura was a known quality, having supplied Reach for many years.
  • Security: Syntura’s security certifications and processes met Reach’s stringent security requirements.
  • Breadth: Syntura could supply web filtering, analytics, cloud connectivity, WAN backhaul and colo.
  • Value for Money: Reach wanted its new VPN to offer better value than the previous solution.
  • Resilience: Syntura could combine multiple datacentres, hosts and circuits to boost resilience.
  • 24/7 Support: Syntura’s 24/7 support matched Reach’s 24/7 business.

 

Benefits

  • Remote working grew from 200 users pre-pandemic to over 3,000, with 2,200 active on a typical day and 1,400 at peak times. 85% of staff now work from home each week.
  • Approximate savings of £2000 per employee annually from rolling out ‘home+hub’ working and consolidating 63 offices into 14 regional hubs optimised for collaboration.
  • Single platform protects everything – remote workers, offices, print sites and cloud systems – helping avoid incidents that impacted other UK media groups.
  • IT team has visibility over VPN use and can enforce policy even when staff are not connected to the VPN.
  • Scope 3 carbon emissions are minimised due to Syntura’s use of green energy.
  • Reach can easily accommodate changes to its office estate, staffing patterns, cloud use and security needs, given the solution’s scalability, cloud links and ZTNA capabilities.

Syntura’s support desk is viewed within the Reach business as very, very good. We never had any issues. For standard requests, we will always use the desk. For more difficult issues that need a real degree of analysis, having that technical resource [senior Syntura techies] available to us when we need it is invaluable.”

Steve Ryder, Group Network Manager, Reach Plc

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Hybrid working is here to stay. Stay competitive with rival employers while reducing office costs long-term.

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