Poole: Blue Chip wins five-year contract with SunLife

Leading managed IT service provider Blue Chip, which only last month became part of the GCI Group, has signed top insurance company SunLife.

This announcement follows a rigorous and highly competitive bid process, and adds a major new customer to Poole-based Blue Chip’s Top 10. An instantly recognisable brand, SunLife is the UK’s largest distributor of life insurance products to the over 50s.

Following its sale to Phoenix Group plc in late 2016, SunLife needed to relocate to new premises in Bristol and seek an IT partner to support both the move itself and replace the existing technology provider.

Blue Chip will be providing a cloud platform with a blend of technology solutions to deliver a high availability infrastructure and enterprise-grade business continuity capability. Built on leading technologies from VMware, EMC, Citrix and Microsoft, the platform will be networked across multiple Tier 3 accredited datacentres, which offer first-class connectivity, built-in resilience and military-approved security.

As part of the service, Blue Chip will provide a comprehensive monitoring and reporting service alongside supporting the infrastructure and users. SunLife is FCA-regulated and has demanding compliance requirements, which will be supported by a Managed Security Service from Blue Chip’s Hampshire-based security operations centre.

Justin Cole, chief operating officer at SunLife, commented: “Our systems integrate numerous partners and Service Providers, allowing us to oversee Operational and Marketing campaign performance in real time. This creates some demanding technical requirements in terms of platform speed, scalability, resilience and security. We were impressed with Blue Chip’s technical team, their solution and the comprehensive Managed Service wrap they offered. Their Proactive Watchpoints that help maintain our technical platform are unique, and give us confidence that our systems will be managed and maintained in a structured and disciplined manner, guaranteeing the resilience and highly secure environment we needed.”

Richard Cook, Blue Chip’s managing director, stated: “SunLife’s requirements are technically complex, but I am delighted that we were able to meet the high standards required. Blue Chip has been a long time in the making - we’ve seen a lot, done a lot, and learned a lot. Throughout our journey, our mantra has always been to put the customer first - to really understand their business and to help them navigate through the fog of a rapidly changing technology landscape. I know that Blue Chip and the 500-strong GCI Group as a whole will align behind SunLife to provide the best service possible, and we relish the opportunity to work together over the years ahead.  These are heady days at Blue Chip and this contract win, with a customer of SunLife’s pedigree and profile, is a great start to our new dawn as part of the GCI Group.”