Merlin Entertainment

Requirement : IT Integration Project

Following the acquisition of Legoland in September 2005, Merlin Entertainments, one of Europe's largest leisure and entertainment giants, looked to UK-based Blue Chip to design, manage and monitor a major IT Integration project to support the company's rapid growth.

>> The Client

Merlin Entertainments is the second biggest attractions operator in Europe and the ninth largest in the world, boasting attractions such as The Dungeons, Sea Life and Earth Explorer. This young, dynamic organisation currently operates 33 attractions in nine European countries, plus a theme park in California, and is continually expanding its estate and growing profit year on year. Following the acquisition of Legoland in September 2005, Merlin were aware that in order to continue providing the ultimate in customer satisfaction it was necessary to implement a highly resilient network across all sites, on a national and international level.

>> Solution

A Trans-global Email Architecture was deployed utilising Microsoft Exchange 2003 clustering containing multiple email domains. Redundant mail links and email routing groups were configured to ensure high availability for receiving and distribution of email. Four Blue Chip technical experts spent an intensive three month period working as part of the Merlin in-house IT team to design a single tiered Active Directory Forest, followed by the implementation and support of a multitude of highly complex ICT solutions, including the integration of the Legoland site into the Merlin IT systems.

>> Success and Company Benefit

Through the implementation of a global Exchange organisation, Blue Chip has assisted with Merlin and Legoland's integration into one easily manageable, highly communicative business entity. The single Active Directory Forest domain has allowed for delegated management, reducing the requirements for permission escalation requests and providing a much more simplified overall management approach. Merlin Entertainments Group IT Manager Geoff Weedon states, "Whilst our in-house IT team is highly skilled, a transformation of this scale required technical expertise that exceeded our abilities. We chose to work with Blue Chip as their dynamic and flexible approach meant that we were able to deliver this project in a comparably short space of time. Merlin and Blue Chip have since built a strong partnership and what began as a 3 month contract, I am pleased to say, is now permanent with Blue Chip handling all of our 3rd line support."

Technical Solution :

• Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
• Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition
• Trend Neat Suite Enterprise
• Fujitsu Siemens Fibrecat Storage Area Network
• Fujitsu Siemens RX Servers for use Worldwide