mhs homes is a leading housing association in the UK, managing more than 10,000 affordable housing units in North Kent. As an organisation with charitable goals focused on providing housing to those in need, it places a strong emphasis on value for money and on keeping communication open with its tenants. IT Manager Amanda Hodge leads the technology function. mhs homes had previously worked with ONI, which Thrive later acquired.

mhs homes needed to modernise an aging on-premise telephony system. Telephony is central to how the association serves its tenants, so the replacement had to deliver greater resilience, simpler management and the scalability to meet growing needs.

The association’s charitable focus and mission of delivering value for money set clear constraints. mhs homes wanted to retain existing on-premise investments, including its handsets, rather than replace everything, and it needed the new solution to combine that current technology with a cloud platform in a cost-effective and efficient way.

Resilience was a particular concern. The system had to keep working through network outages and power disruptions so that the association could maintain communication with its tenants. mhs homes also wanted to reduce the management overhead of running telephony infrastructure in-house, including upgrades and outages.

mhs homes chose Thrive for its ability to integrate the existing on-premise infrastructure with a new cloud-hosted SIP solution. Thrive’s industry expertise, together with its acquisition of ONI, a previous partner of mhs homes, made continuing the collaboration a straightforward decision. Amanda Hodge, IT Manager, noted that Thrive stood out for understanding the association’s focus on value for money.

Thrive implemented Cisco Unified Communications Manager with integrated call recording and a contact centre express to meet mhs homes’ communication needs. The handsets stayed on-site, while everything else, from call management to reporting, was migrated to the cloud. Built-in redundancy allows mhs homes to maintain full functionality even during network outages or power disruptions.

Thrive’s services for the association cover the UCaaS platform, managed customer support, colocation and other services. Thrive manages the system, including upgrades, and tailored the solution to the association’s charitable goals and specific requirements rather than applying a standard package.

• Reduced management overhead: with Thrive managing the system, mhs homes no longer worries about upgrades or outages.
• Telephony has stayed up and running even when mhs homes experienced issues on its own side.
• Business continuity maintained through challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Existing handsets retained on-site, keeping the transition cost-effective in line with the value-for-money mission.
• Redundancy preserves full functionality during network outages or power disruptions.