South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) runs 999 emergency dispatch across 3,600 square miles of Kent, Surrey and Sussex — supporting around 4,000 staff and operations across 110 sites. The platform behind the service has to be one of the calmest pieces of technology the trust runs.
The original Nutanix platform we built for SECAmb in 2016 had done exactly that — three years of uninterrupted service. But the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) infrastructure was due for modernisation, and the wider estate had grown beyond what the legacy three-tier elements could comfortably carry.
The brief was straightforward: refresh the CAD platform, increase capacity for administrative workloads, add proper multi-site disaster recovery — and do it without touching 999.
What was driving the refresh
- Issue:
CAD modernisation — the 999 dispatch platform was reaching end of life and needed a strategic platform replacement
- Issue:
Capacity pressure — administrative application workloads had outgrown the existing platform's headroom
- Issue:
Multi-site DR gap — the existing architecture didn't deliver the resilience profile a Category 1 responder requires
- Issue:
Vendor complexity — three-tier elements added friction during incidents and slowed response
How we approached it
The work built on a partnership going back to SECAmb's HQ relocation in 2016. The 2016 platform had been a workhorse — three years uninterrupted — and the lessons from running it shaped the refresh approach.
Discover
Strategic review of the CAD infrastructure roadmap with SECAmb's technology team. Where the existing platform was holding up, where it was straining, and what the next three to five years needed.
Design
Target architecture: a brand-new corporate Nutanix cluster with expanded compute, storage and memory headroom — and a plan to repurpose the original 2016 nodes as the inter-site replication target.
Build
New corporate cluster brought up alongside the existing environment. Cohesity deployed for multi-site data protection. Nutanix Files configured to retire the legacy Windows File Service.
Migrate
Phased migration of CAD and administrative systems onto the new platform — sequenced and validated to ensure 999 service continued uninterrupted throughout.
Replicate
Inter-site replication brought online using the original 2016 nodes. Multi-site DR posture in place, with Cohesity providing the second layer of protection.
Run
Continuing managed support and strategy advice — the same relationship that's underpinned SECAmb's platform since 2016.
What we delivered
New corporate cluster — compute, storage and networking consolidated into a single hyperconverged platform.
Next-generation hypervisor — collapses a layer of vendor complexity and gives a single control plane across the estate.
Replaced the legacy Windows File Service. Native to the platform, no separate file servers to manage.
Application-layer visibility across all clusters. Faster fault isolation and cleaner change control.
Multi-site data protection. Scaled, deduplicated, and unified — designed to survive a site loss and recover quickly.
This is one of the best engagements we've ever had with an external company.
What changed
Resilience
Multi-site DR with inter-site replication and Cohesity protection. No single point of failure for the platform behind 999 dispatch.
Performance
Administrative systems moved onto modern HCI — vastly improved response and headroom for growth.
Continuity
The 999 service continued uninterrupted throughout the migration. A platform refresh that the people relying on the service never had to notice.
Simplicity
One Nutanix management plane across compute, storage, files and application visibility. Less vendor sprawl, faster operations.
Platform at a glance
- Coverage area
- 3,600 square miles (Kent, Surrey, Sussex)
- Workforce
- 4,000 staff (90% operational / frontline)
- Operational sites
- 110
- Legacy platform
- Three-tier architecture (with elements from the original 2016 deployment)
- New platform
- Multi-site Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure
- Hypervisor
- Nutanix AHV
- File services
- Nutanix Files (replacing legacy Windows File Service)
- Application visibility
- Nutanix Flow
- Data protection
- Cohesity (multi-site)
In numbers
- 02 / 04Of coverage across the South East0mi²
- 03 / 04Workforce, 90% operational0
- 04 / 04Operational sites0
Beyond the refresh
- Trusted technology partner since the 2016 HQ relocation
- Strategic infrastructure advice and roadmap support
- Platform managed services across compute, storage and DR
- Continuous engagement with the IT and operations leadership team
The 2021 refresh sits inside a longer arc — a partnership that started with the 2016 headquarters move and has continued through every stage of the platform's life. SECAmb don't see M-Tech as a project supplier; they see us as the team that keeps showing up.