How Southern Communications Group (SCG) and PacketFront Created BECS Focus, A New Managed Services Model for MSPs, giving greater operational control for enterprises.
What started as SCG’s own network transformation, has evolved into a new managed service model for enterprise customers.
It Started with SCG’s Own Transformation
Southern Communications Group has grown rapidly over the past decade, expanding both organically and through acquisition. From connectivity and private WANs to hosted telephony and critical communications services, this growth also brought increasing operational complexity.
Different customer environments, multiple network vendors and varying deployment standards placed growing pressure on engineering teams. Manual configuration, inconsistent documentation and specialist knowledge requirements made it increasingly difficult to scale while maintaining the high customer experience for which SCG had become known.
Rather than simply recruiting more engineers, SCG chose a different approach.
SCG’s ‘Buy Back Time’ programme
“We instigated the ‘Buy Back Time’ programme, which aimed to identify where an engineering process can be automated and release personnel from through life management, whilst improving their design capabilities,” explained SCG CTO Matt Wring.“The primary driver for us was finding a universal orchestration platform that could automate configuration and provisioning through API integration. The aim was to make engineering teams more efficient by allowing the system to handle standardised processes automatically.”
SCG wanted a vendor neutral orchestration platform that could integrate through rich APIs, automate configuration and provisioning, and support both existing and future customer environments regardless of equipment manufacturer.
Following an extensive market evaluation, SCG selected PacketFront’s BECS Atlas Network Orchestration platform.
“There are monitoring tools that think they are orchestrators, and orchestrators that think they are monitoring tools,” said Matt Wring. “We chose BECS because it was a specialist network orchestration platform.”
Deploying BECS Atlas transformed the way SCG managed its own network. Automation reduced operational effort, standardisation simplified deployment, and orchestration allowed engineering teams to focus on higher value activities rather than repetitive operational tasks.
The success of the project prompted a new question
The success of the project also prompted a new question. If orchestration could transform SCG’s own operations, could the same approach help enterprise customers facing the same growing complexity? Many organisations lacked a practical way to introduce automation without increasing complexity or building dedicated network operations teams.
A Familiar Challenge for Enterprise Customers
While SCG transformed its own network operations, one of its long-standing and important enterprise customer, Assystem Energy and Infrastructure Ltd (Assystem), was undertaking a review of its own operational model and was at the same time exploring how to modernise its network operations.
The organisation wanted greater visibility, faster service changes and more operational control across a complex multi-vendor LAN environment. But at the same time, Assystem wanted to avoid the cost and complexity of building a dedicated network operations centre.
“We’ve got a choice. We can move everything in-house, increase costs and increase complexity, or outsource everything,” said Brian Whittaker, CIO at Assystem. “What we were looking for was a way to bring more technical capability in-house without bringing in a fully dedicated NOC team.”
Assystem independently evaluated several approaches, including vendor native management platforms, third party orchestration tools and alternative operational models.
At the same time, ongoing discussions between Assystem and its trusted managed service provider, SCG, revealed that both organisations were exploring the same challenge from different perspectives.
SCG wanted to extend the operational benefits it achieved with BECS Atlas, to enterprise customers.
Assystem wanted greater operational capability without taking on greater operational burden.
Those shared objectives became the catalyst for the next stage of the partnership.
Creating BECS Focus Network Orchestration for enterprise LAN environments
Building on the proven orchestration capabilities already deployed across SCG’s core network, PacketFront and SCG collaborated to develop a streamlined Network orchestrator. Rather than replicating the full capabilities of BECS Atlas, the new Edition, BECS Focus, was designed specifically for enterprise LAN environments where simplicity, operational visibility and ease of use were equally important as powerful automation.
BECS Focus capabilities:
- Vendor neutral orchestration across complex network environments
- Automated zero touch provisioning
- Rich API integration
- Secure operational control
- An intuitive graphical interface that allows users to make day-to-day operational changes quickly and safely
The result was a managed service that combines the expertise of the service provider with the operational agility enterprise customers increasingly expect.
The platform enables the service provider to continue managing infrastructure, lifecycle management, firmware updates and the orchestration platform itself, while the enterprise customer gain secure real time operational control through a simple graphical interface.
Assystem Puts the Model into Practice
Following a structured proof of concept, Assystem selected BECS Focus because of its vendor neutral capabilities, intuitive operation and ability to support a controlled in-house operational model without increasing technical complexity.
The company became the first organisation to deploy BECS Focus on a live production environment. And the results were immediate.
Operational changes that previously required extensive manual processes could now be completed safely in real time.
Configuration became automated through zero-touch provisioning, reducing both operational workload and the potential for human error.
Shared Benefits
“The benefit of deploying BECS Focus is that Assystem’s team no longer have to raise large manual change requests,” said Matt Wring. “They can make those changes directly through the orchestrator in real-time.”
“We’ve actually seen 95 percent of all change requests removed. It’s made things faster and more efficient for Assystem, while also reducing operational load on our own teams.”
A major contributor to this success was the new graphical user interface.
“The new interface is graphical,” explained Matt Wring. “You get a picture of the switch, click on the port, tell it what you want it to do, and the platform handles the orchestration behind the scenes.”
The operational model clearly separates responsibilities; SCG continues to provide connectivity, infrastructure management, lifecycle management, firmware maintenance and orchestration. Assystem gains secure, real-time operational control, faster service modification and greater day-to-day responsiveness without taking responsibility for the underlying infrastructure.
A New Managed Services Model for Wider Adoption
BECS Focus is designed to support a managed service model that other MSPs can adopt. It enables managed service providers to extend enterprise network orchestration beyond their own networks and into customer environments, creating a repeatable managed service offering.
The model strengthens customer relationships through greater operational collaboration while creating opportunities to expand managed services with multi-vendor automation and enterprise self service capabilities.
SCG has expanded its managed services portfolio with BECS Focus, creating new customer value and new commercial opportunities by making enterprise network orchestration available as a managed service.
For enterprise organisations, the benefits are equally significant; Rather than choosing between complete outsourcing or complete internal ownership, customers gain the operational visibility and control they need while continuing to rely on their managed service provider for specialist expertise, lifecycle management and long-term operational resilience.
Assystem – Looking ahead
Today, Assystem is evaluating the wider rollout of BECS Focus across its international operations.
“We believe it’s best in class and a great way of moving forward within the business,” said Brian Whittaker. “It removes many of the operational problems we see today and gives us a scalable platform for the future.”
Next step for BECS Focus and PacketFront
What began as SCG’s own operational transformation evolved into a repeatable managed service model for enterprise customers. BECS Focus proves that orchestration can create value not only for network operators, but across the entire managed services ecosystem. A Model that is now ready for wider MSP adoption.
Read more about BECS Focus Edition>>
💡 We’ll be showcasing BECS Focus at Connected Britain in London on 9–10 September.
BECS Focus Release webinar 15 September
At the release webinar, we’ll take a closer look at BECS Focus, and how it can empower you as an operator, to deliver smarter network management across both single and multi-vendor environments. Helping the businesses you support operate more efficiently while driving growth on both sides and building stronger, lasting customer relationships.
👉 Join the release webinar by signing up here: BECS Focus release webinar>>
Hope to see you at this year’s Connected Britain 9-10 September and Channel National Awards 24 September!
🎟️ Connected Britain 2026
📍 ExCeL, London, UK.
📅 9-10 September 2026.
👥 PacketFront: Timo Kuusela, Lloyd Warn, Gary Iredale, Tony Green, Stuart Hutson, Szymon Pikuła, Daniel Bryant, Marcin Chaj and Jonny Wetterborn.
👉 Read more about what is waiting for you at our stand: PacketFront at Connected Britain 2026>>
🎟️ Channel National Awards
📍 Park Plaza Hotel, Westminister, London, UK.
📅 24 September 2026.
👥 PacketFront: Timo Kuusela, Daniel Bryant.
👥 Sycope>>: Piotr Kawa.
👥 FNT Software>>: Ali Selvi.
👉 Read more: PacketFront at Channel National Awards>>
BECS Focus named finalist at the Connected Britain Awards & Channel National Awards
Finalist of Connected Britain Awards:
- The Best Enterprise Solution category.
Shortlisted for two Awards at the Channel National Awards:
- Best Enterprise Managed Service Customer Solution
- Best Software Vendor – Workflow
Being shortlisted for these awards is a great recognition of the dedication and innovation our team has put into developing BECS Focus. We’re incredibly proud to see our work recognised and to celebrate this success together!
Explore our 2026 event line-up
We’ll be out and about again in 2026. Come and see where you can catch us: Explore our 2026 event line-up>>
Stay on top – Get the latest news from PacketFront
Get the latest news on upcoming features, solutions and products, plus invitations to our courses and events. Subscribe here>>
