RJDM boosts staff productivity and collaboration through full-fibre connection from CityFibre

Background

Since 2011, digital communication specialists RJDM have been creating award winning work for some of the world’s biggest brands from Coca Cola and Disney to Castrol and Jaguar Land Rover. The Northampton based firm employs 18 staff including animators, online experts, app developers and film makers. Combining the latest digital marketing technology with their technical expertise, the team develops communication solutions such as apps, animations and video content for their clients as well as offering virtual reality, augmented reality, social media and screen media. Due to the nature of their business and the tools they use, a fast and reliable internet connection is essential to the smooth running and day to day operations of the business. But with a rapidly expanding team and string of new business wins, this increased demand on their already strained broadband connection meant a new and better solution was needed urgently.

Challenge

Paul Thurland, Managing Director, RJDM, explained: “Our connection was manageable but it wasn’t quite hitting the mark in terms of speed. We use many cloud based services across our business and send large data files on a regular basis which rely on connectivity to function, so the slow connection meant the studio would literally come to a standstill at times.” As well as the increased volume of production, the very nature of their industry means that RJDM needs to constantly build on its creative services and digital tool kit to stay ahead of the competition. Paul continued: “Animation has become very popular recently and to provide this requires high speed access to cloud based services. Our previous connectivity was too slow to enable cloud based rendering to work effectively for animations, as the large amounts of data being moved would be too slow. With more clients looking for this type of work we knew we needed a connection that could support our future endeavors and growth.”

Solution

When RJDM decided to move to a new office in Moulton Park at the beginning of 2017, Paul saw this as the perfect opportunity to improve connectivity across the business. Having looked into internet service providers and various networks in the area, RJDM found out about the Gigabit City movement in Northampton. Paul said: “We contacted dbfb to find out about CityFibre’s digital infrastructure and how we could get ultrafast connectivity for our business. “dbfb is a local company, which really appeals to us, and the next-generation full-fibre infrastructure was exactly what we needed to solve our slow connectivity issue.” Paul explained: “Since joining the CityFibre network we’ve definitely seen improvements, especially across our animation offering. Rendering is a very processor-heavy function and most animation studios will want to use cloudbased on demand rendering services which rely on high speed connectivity. “Our staff love the new service as it makes their lives easier. We are now able to work more effectively as we’re not held back by our connectivity. It’s also helping us to interact even more across our team as we access many of our shared systems using cloud technology to feed into projects.” “We are a digital business operating at the leading edge of technology so it was a vital investment for us now and for our future connectivity needs.”