Water & Wastewater Treatment

H aving used a tra- ditional VPN for 15 years, York- shire Water's switch to NetMo- tion in 2017 resolved a major challenge faced by many companies, especially in the utilities sector – requiring always-on connectivity for a large, field-based workforce. For Yorkshire Water's 2,600 field technicians, access to reliable connectivity helps the utility reach its mission of delivering clean water and sanitation to over five million customers every day. Martin Day, technical lead at Yorkshire Water summed up the need for a robust mobile solution by stating: "If we don't have connectiv- ity, we don't have anything. It underpins everything that we do." In 2019, Yorkshire Water added NetMotion's visibility and diagnostics tools, giving its IT team insight and con- trol over what happens at the network, device and applica- tion levels. They can see de- tails about Wi-Fi and cellular network traffic volumes, identify where technicians are located, understand whether and how o'en tech- nicians are connected, what applications are being used, and how those individual ap- plications are behaving. Now, whenever employees encounter persistent cellular connectivity issues, York- shire Water's IT team is able to generate detailed network performance reports that it presents to its current telco provider, EE, for faster reso- lution and service upgrades. Adopting NetMotion has brought a number of benefits to Yorkshire Water: l Single sign-on, replacing a separate VPN login. l Device authentication, eliminating the need for separate tokens and licens- ing. l Support for home and third-party Wi-Fi networks. l Military-grade encryption standards suitable for restricted sites. l Resiliency and failover for the system between two Yorkshire Water data centres. l Greater internal control over security. l Seamless patching and upgrades. Day continued: "We've built enormous trust with our teams in the field as well as the entire business. The field technicians are saying this is miles bet- ter, and adoption is being driven by them. They walk away happy, they tell their colleagues, they tell their managers, and the manag- ers are happy with us. For Yorkshire Water, NetMotion's connectivity solutions have been a game-changer, which is why we've deployed their solutions across our whole business." "For utility companies like Yorkshire Water, con- nectivity directly impacts the service they are able to deliver to customers," said Achi Lewis, EMEA director, NetMotion So'ware. "The transformation among York- shire Water's field techni- cians has been remarkable and very gratifying. Once customers like Yorkshire Water see how quickly and easily they can scale up with NetMotion's platform, they're ready to jump in feet first." www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | MARCH 2020 | 33 The Knowledge: innovation zone Ensuring connectivity A er deploying a new mobile connectivity solution to its field-based employees in 2017, Yorkshire Water's experience improved so radically that the utility extended the full NetMotion suite to its entire workforce. Now, in addition to providing its mobile workers with Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity, the company's IT team has the network visibility and diagnostics capabilities to ensure business continuity. One of Yorkshire Water's treatment facilities.

• Cover
• Contents
• The Talk
• In Focus
• The Knowledge