14 March 2017

Rockingham Motor Speedway is Europe’s fastest banked oval racing circuit and needed an IT network to match.

Rockingham Motor Speedway has overhauled its ICT infrastructure to support the growth of its sports events and business centre.

The Corby-based venue is the first race track to be built in the UK since Brooklands in 1907. It is also Europe’s fastest banked oval circuit, with the unbeaten lap record for the 1.5 mile oval set at 24.719 seconds in September 2001.

With its existing IT infrastructure under pressure, Rockingham turned to managed services provider IT Specialists (ITS), which has a team based around 30 miles away in Lutterworth, to update its systems.

Downtime was not an option during the upgrade: Rockingham’s systems relay real-time race information to thousands of viewers across the UK. Complete reliability was also necessary for the venue’s serviced office business – the 20-tenant Rockingham Building Business Centre (RBBC) opened in 2014 and its users expect and require dependable internet in order to operate.

An early warning system to help identify and resolve issues was essential to ensure continuity of systems and services. ITS worked with Rockingham’s in-house IT team to ensure the communications services were running as efficiently as possible.

The company deployed a dedicated internet line and improved Rockingham’s network infrastructure by installing and upgrading internet leased lines. To ensure bandwidth capacity, security and flexibility for the serviced offices, ITS migrated Rockingham to a VLAN, and upgraded the RBBC’s network backbone with fibre.

A higher capacity server was also connected to support business growth and ensured faster data recovery by switching from traditional tape backup to software-based backups.

Following the initial project, Rockingham has now engaged ITS to manage IT support.