Charles Stanley is one of the leading investment management companies in the UK and was recently acquired by Raymond James. The firm operates a network of UK branches and has maintained a strategic technology partnership for more than two decades, initially through ONI, which was later acquired by Thrive. Its network and communications are overseen by Network Communications Manager David Gould, who joined the firm over 20 years ago, and Head of Technology Services Alex Stratton.

When David Gould joined Charles Stanley more than 20 years ago, the firm was operating on a flat network architecture. For an investment management company serving clients across a network of UK branches, that design offered little resilience and limited room to grow. Communications ran on a legacy PBX system that needed modernizing.

As the business evolved, so did its connectivity needs. Traditional dual MPLS circuits were costly and constrained bandwidth and performance across the branches. The firm needed connectivity with no single point of failure, higher availability and better redundancy, without an unmanageable increase in cost.

Resilience has always been a cornerstone of Charles Stanley's IT strategy, and cyber threats were becoming more sophisticated and widespread. The firm also had to be ready for remote working and video collaboration before the pandemic made them unavoidable. After its acquisition by Raymond James, some services moved in-house or to new platforms, so the firm needed a partner able to keep delivering UK connectivity and network support within a global framework.

One of Thrive's earliest projects was a complete redesign of Charles Stanley's infrastructure. Thrive helped design and provided the engineering resources to refresh the network from top to bottom, migrating the firm from a flat network to a more robust, resilient structure built on Cisco equipment. Thrive also supported the move from the legacy PBX system to IP telephony, delivering technical design, implementation support and hands-on collaboration.

Working with Thrive, Charles Stanley moved from traditional dual MPLS to an MPLS/DIA hybrid using Direct Internet Access, and is now dropping MPLS entirely in favor of DIA. Thrive's project management team continues to deliver connectivity with no single point of failure, and SD-WAN technology has improved redundancy and availability across the UK branches while reducing costs and increasing bandwidth.

Thrive identified, tested and deployed collaboration tools including Cisco Webex, video conferencing and VPN services before COVID, and introduced Meraki cloud-managed wireless to cut overhead and simplify management. For business continuity, Thrive brokered a meeting with Cisco that led to the adoption of Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV), which supports disaster recovery exercises and keeps the firm's websites up during outages or maintenance. Thrive also offered a range of protection tools as threats grew.

Following the acquisition by Raymond James, Thrive still delivers connectivity services for the branches and manages the firm's carriers, giving Charles Stanley one number to call and one team that coordinates everything. The same account manager and core engineers have supported the environment for years, so troubleshooting is faster and projects run more smoothly.

• Flat network replaced with a resilient Cisco architecture, and legacy PBX migrated to IP telephony
• Move from dual MPLS to an MPLS/DIA hybrid, now shifting fully to DIA, cut costs and raised bandwidth across UK branches
• SD-WAN improved redundancy and availability, with connectivity designed for no single point of failure
• Webex, video conferencing and VPN deployed before COVID left the firm ready to pivot to remote work
• OTV-based continuity keeps websites up 24/7 through outages, maintenance and disaster recovery exercises
• Thrive manages carriers and branch connectivity after the Raymond James acquisition, with the same engineers for years