United Assurance is a well known insurance company providing a wide range of services within the UK. Much of the business of the company is handled by a call centre located in Redhill in Surrey. The head office of the company with its main computer systems and IT department is located in the north of England.

Project Requirements
The company was implementing a workflow system to support the insurance claims department. Although the company had resources to manage the Unix/Microsoft systems, these resources were located far from the call centre. A need existed for a small team to provide networking, systems configuration, administration and development support for a number of HP9000 Unix systems running Oracle databases located in Redhill. 

The Solution
Layer3 provided key personnel who could cover the range of required skills. The majority of the requirement could be provided by one individual. Able to initially configure and install systems and application software. Then able to manage the systems on a daily basis, maintain and manage the Oracle databases and provide technical support for the third party developers who were integrating the work flow system. Part of the effort went into providing a means by which smaller secondary systems could take over from the larger primary machine in the event of a failure. Apart from fully documenting the configuration and its operation, Layer3 could also provide ad hoc support for items as diverse as network monitoring and desktop configuration. 

Benefits
• Single point of contact for wide range of skills and service 
• Highly efficient use of personnel
• Reduced head count and therefore reduced cost - £70,000 for support/development staff.
• Savings made by producing a simple fail over system as against paying for an expensive product such as Service Guard - Saving of £375,000 across all systems.