Case Study: IT infrastructure refresh for global media organisation.

  • 13 legacy racks consolidated down to 4 target racks across two relocation phase,
  • ~740 Cat5a cables audited and replaced with a 10GB-rated Cat6 structured cabling system.
  • 195 physical devices and 858 cable connections relocated across two phased, out-of-hours migrationip.
  • 16 comms rooms fully re-cabled and dressed to a consistent, supportable standard.

Background.

The client is the London head office of a global media and entertainment organisation, housing a significant on-premise IT footprint that had grown organically over many years to support broadcast, corporate and operational systems.

Like many long-established sites, the client's comms rooms and server racks had been re-cabled over successive refresh cycles, with a legacy Cat5a structured cabling backbone that was approaching the limits of its supportable bandwidth. Equipment density across the estate had also crept upward over time, with racks that had originally been provisioned for a single purpose gradually being used to host a wider mix of systems.

Ahead of a planned technology refresh and site consolidation exercise, the client wanted to bring its physical IT environment up to a modern, fully documented and supportable standard. This was completed with the goals of: improving performance headroom, reducing the physical footprint required per rack, and eliminating the operational risk that comes with undocumented "as-built" cabling and asset records.

The challenge.

Sunspeed was engaged to support a multi-phase remediation and optimisation programme across the client's head office estate. The scope brought together several interlinked challenges:

  • Ageing, undocumented cabling. The existing Cat5a backbone (circa 370 cables) needed to be fully audited and replaced with a 10GB-rated Cat6 structured cabling system, without a reliable existing record of what connected where.
  • Rack over-provisioning. Multiple legacy racks needed to be consolidated down to a smaller footprint — 8 racks into 2, and separately 5 racks into 2 — without accurate hardware or cabling documentation to plan the migrations from.
  • Live environment, zero disruption tolerance. All audit and cabling work had to be carried out around live, in-service equipment, with disconnection and relocation activity confined to tightly controlled maintenance windows (predominantly out-of-hours and Saturday working) to avoid impacting business operations.
  • Estate-wide comms room condition. Sixteen separate comms rooms across the site required a full cable trace, disconnect, and re-dress exercise to bring wiring back to a neat, supportable standard.
  • Programme complexity. With multiple concurrent workstreams — cabling, relocation, and comms room remediation — running across a single site, the client needed a single point of governance to manage sequencing, stakeholder coordination (facilities management, telco/WAN provider, and networking partner) and a master delivery plan.

Our solution.

Sunspeed delivered the programme as a coordinated set of workstreams, each following Sunspeed's standard audit-first, document-then-build methodology:

1. Structured cabling audit & renewal (two phases) Sunspeed carried out an end-to-end cable audit of the existing structured cabling environment, then designed and installed a new Cat6 structured cabling system rated for 10GB, connecting each rack back to a central patching frame. This included supply and installation of 15 x 24-port Cat6 patch panels and around 360 patch leads per phase, tested and backed by a 20-year warranty, with all new cabling run under the existing raised floor and legacy cabling removed.

2. Rack consolidation & IT relocation (two phases) Ahead of each relocation, Sunspeed's engineers ran a full hardware and end-to-end cable trace audit, building a single Infrastructure Planner (asset schedule, rack elevations and patch schedule) to capture an accurate baseline of an estate that wasn't fully documented. Using this data, Sunspeed worked with the client's technical team to design the target rack layout — consolidating 8 racks into 2 in the larger phase, and 5 racks into 2 in the second — and delivered a pre-cabling exercise to install as much of the new cabling as possible ahead of the move, minimising on-the-day downtime. Relocation activity (120 physical devices and 528 cable connections in the larger phase; 75 devices and 330 connections in the second) was run as a series of discrete, out-of-hours relocation events, each following a de-rack, transport, re-rack and connect-and-dress sequence, with basic handover support provided to bridge into the client's own power-up and test process. Empty legacy racks were collected for disposal as part of the exercise.

3. Comms room remediation Across 16 comms rooms, Sunspeed carried out a cable trace audit, disconnected all existing cabling, and re-connected and dressed it to a neat, presentable, fully supportable standard, reusing existing cabling where suitable. Work was phased and delivered predominantly out-of-hours or overnight to avoid disruption, with each phase invoiced on completion.

4. Enhanced Project Delivery Management To tie the programme together, Sunspeed provided a dedicated Project Delivery Manager, establishing project governance aligned to the client's own PMO, and creating and maintaining a master delivery plan spanning data centre readiness, WAN deployment, enabling works, IT relocation, system power-up sequencing, decommissioning and project closure. This included ongoing stakeholder management across facilities management, the client's telco/WAN provider and networking partner.

Outcomes.

  • A fully modernised, documented cabling backbone — legacy Cat5a cabling replaced with a 10GB-rated, 20-year warrantied Cat6 structured cabling system across the affected areas of the estate.
  • A significantly reduced physical footprint — 13 legacy racks consolidated down to just 4 target racks across the two relocation phases, freeing up data centre space and simplifying ongoing management.
  • Zero unplanned disruption — all cabling, audit and relocation activity was completed around a live environment, with disruptive work confined to scheduled out-of-hours and weekend windows.
  • A single source of truth for the estate — a complete, client-owned Infrastructure Planner (asset schedules, rack elevations and patch schedules) was handed over, replacing what had previously been incomplete or out-of-date documentation.
  • 16 comms rooms brought up to a consistent, supportable standard, improving day-to-day operability for the client's own IT team.
  • Coordinated, single-threaded governance across a multi-workstream programme, with one project delivery function managing sequencing and stakeholder alignment across cabling, relocation and telco/facilities dependencies.