Leading London Market Property & Casualty Insurer, Catlin, ensures business continuity with installation of Geo Networks' fibre

Geo welcomes first insurance sector customer.

Geo Networks Limited (Geo), a leading provider of fibre optic networks for heavy data users, today announced that Catlin, a leading London Market Property and Casualty Insurer has selected Geo’s fibre network to support its business continuity plans and drive efficiencies between its City based office, Lloyd’s of London and two data centres. The new deal marks Geo’s entry into the insurance sector and is a strategic move to expand the Geo offering in this market.

Working with partner, BIS Ltd, Geo has delivered five diverse dark fibre circuits to Catlin. These links are integral to Catlin’s London network infrastructure, linking the Group’s new Gracechurch Street office, the Lloyd’s of London building and two London data centres, for the seamless transit of all types of network traffic.

Following Catlin’s move from Mincing Lane to Gracechurch Street, this new deployment will continue to provide Catlin with a robust and secure London network infrastructure which offers reduced impact in the event of any line outages. The five cables ensure that there is a back-up route available, so that down-time risk is mitigated and data transfer is never completely disrupted.

“Critical to us is a network that provides diversity to fulfil our business continuity strategy, and an infrastructure that tolerates line outages without impacting services”, said Simon Johnson, IS Service Strategy Manager at Catlin Group. “BIS Ltd, our managed co-location provider, suggested Geo on the strength of its innovative and secure network, housed in London’s sewers. Downtime is costly not just in terms of business impact but also through loss of reputation and therefore we have designed our network to minimise the potential for disruption”, he added.

By using the sewers, Geo’s networks are unique in terms of security and uptime, significantly minimising any disruption as a result of physical damage from surface maintenance. The location also means that it is fast and simple to deploy new subducts, and digging is kept to a minimum for the lowest possible disruption to London’s streets.

“Geo has built a steadfast reputation as a leading provider of bespoke network solutions,” said Mark Ryder, Head of Enterprise at Geo. “We are delighted to welcome Catlin to our list of highly respected global financial services organisations, and look forward to developing a growing number of customers across the insurance sector. Connectivity into Lloyd’s and Gracechurch Street, combined with our uniquely secure fibre and virtually unlimited bandwidth, provides us a very compelling proposition to London insurance and broker community.”