GTT’s customer is SGN — formerly Southern Gas Networks — which distributes gas for cooking and heating to 5.9 million homes and businesses across Scotland, southern England and Northern Ireland.
The deal is part of SGN’s digital transformation, said Tom Homer (pictured), the president of GTT’s European division. “We value our strategic partnership with SGN and look forward to continuing to support its next phase of IT transformation with our secure cloud networking and professional services capability.”
Under the deal, GTT will provide cloud networking services, WAN and LAN services, and DDoS mitigation, and will increase the scope of professional services delivered in support of its cloud transformation strategy.
GTT said has been a strategic partner to SGN since 2017, though that likely dates back to Interoute days. Since then, SGN has undertaken a transformation to migrate the vast majority of its IT services to the cloud, improving business efficiency and employee productivity.
A key aim of the project is to enhance levels of network security, availability and resilience, as well as to pursue new agile ways of working and digital innovation.
Andrew Quail, director of IT and innovation at SGN, said: “Over the years, we’ve built a strong collaborative relationship with GTT, implementing solutions that enable our network infrastructure to adapt as our company and operating environment changes.”
He added: “The cloud connectivity GTT provides has been essential for us, supporting almost 50% of our workforce who have been working very successfully and securely from home from the start of the pandemic.”
Homer, who joined GTT last year, said: “SGN’s digital transformation is impressive, and GTT is proud to provide secure and resilient connectivity to support its business, employees and customers.”
Meanwhile mystery surrounds the deal announced last October for I Squared Capital (ISQ) to buy the infrastructure division of GTT for US$2.15 billion. ISQ already owns Hong Kong’s HGC Global Communications and the GTT Infrastructure deal was seen as a furtherance of its telecoms plans. The companies said in October that the acquisition is expected to close during the first half of 2021, which still has nearly three months to run — but people close to the deal have not responded to Capacity’s enquiries about progress.
