How MTI bagged one of 'the biggest deals in its history' with Southern Water
The project will be the biggest end-to-end utilities project the MSP has thus far undertaken, according to sales and marketing chief Angelo Di Ventura
MTI Technology has won a five-year contract valued at £15m with Southern Water as part of the latter's transformation programme.
The Godalming-based MSP will provide the authority with managed services around datacentre modernisation, data protection and enhanced cybersecurity.
A key part of the transformation programme will see MTI transition the water authority from a fully third-party managed datacentre to a self-managed software-defined datacentre.
Southern Water is among the largest water authorities in England, servicing Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, East Sussex, West Sussex and Kent.
MTI will design and built two modern datacentres in collocated facilities, which will include the provision of an interconnected dual-fibre network, internet services and on-site services.
A new hyper-converged compute, storage and network architecture will provide Southern Water with a flexible IT platform for efficient and effective service delivery, including the capability to manage private and public cloud infrastructure in the future.
The MSP will also be providing security services as part of the transformation programme.
CRN caught up with Angelo Di Ventura, MTI's chief sales & marketing officer, to find out the ins and outs of how it secured one of the biggest deals in the company's history.
What was the bidding process like?
It was tough and long! This deal has been around the year in the making. I can't name who we were up against but there were two other significant bidders certainly at the shortlisted stage, and they were bidding with alternative technologies to our technology.
We were closely aligned with Dell EMC and VMware, particularly in the datacentre modernisation offering. There were alternative technologies being proposed but this was absolutely the right fit and the right solution for the customer.
What snagged the win for MTI, in your opinion?
We worked very closely pre-bid, during the bid and now after the successful bid and we absolutely understood what the customer wanted to achieve, the long-term outcomes it was trying to deliver and how this project shifted into the longer-term IT strategy and how that supported the aims of the business.
The customer recognised that we truly understood what they were trying to achieve and they drew confidence from that.
What attracted you to this bid?
Our business is focused on digital transformation. The catalyst for that is having agile IT to run their business applications; we help organisations navigate that complex journey from legacy to the modern datacentre.
The bit that's unique for us is the skills we have around security and cybersecurity, which is a big part of our business.
One of the headaches for customers, as they're going on that journey, is making sure that as their data moves from legacy to modern workplace - whether it's on-premise, in the cloud or both - the data is secure. We can give customers confidence that that will be the case.
So the thing that attracted us to this bid is that the elements of what the customer was trying to achieve, absolutely fit in the sweet spot of our core competence.
Is this MTI's first time working with a water authority and, if so, how did you have to switch up your approach to the bid?
It's not the first time we've worked with a water authority - we are a supplier to other utilities companies - but it is the first time we've embarked on an end-to end-project of this size within a utilities organisation.
In terms of change, we didn't really need to do anything; we've spent the last three years investing in technical capability, new systems, services and processes to be able to deliver this exact type of outcome for a customer.
It certainly puts MTI on the map, in terms of what we do and what we're capable of.