Financial Services
Strengthening Resilience and Connectivity Through a Trusted Technology Partnership
As one of the leading investment management companies in the UK, Charles Stanley has long understood the critical importance of an established, secure, and scalable IT infrastructure. For more than two decades, the company has maintained a strategic technology partnership—initially through ONI who was later acquired by Thrive. That long-standing relationship has enabled Charles Stanley, recently acquired by Raymond James, to stay ahead of the curve in connectivity, collaboration, and cloud readiness.
Building a Network without Compromise
When David Gould joined Charles Stanley over 20 years ago, the firm was operating with a flat network architecture. One of Thrive’s earliest projects was to help Charles Stanley completely redesign that infrastructure—from transitioning to a Cisco environment to implementing a fully resilient network.
“Right at the beginning, they helped design and provide the engineering resources to refresh our network from top to bottom,” recalled Gould, Network Communications Manager. “They migrated us from a flat network to a more robust, resilient structure using Cisco equipment.”
This partnership wasn’t limited to networking. Thrive also supported Charles Stanley’s move from a legacy PBX system to IP telephony, delivering the technical design, implementation support, and hands-on collaboration that helped modernise communications.
Smart Connectivity for a Growing Business
As Charles Stanley’s business evolved, so did its connectivity needs. Working closely with Thrive, the organisation moved away from traditional MPLS circuits to a hybrid model using Direct Internet Access (DIA). This not only reduced costs but also increased bandwidth and performance across the firm’s UK branches.
“We moved from traditional dual MPLS to an MPLS/DIA hybrid, and now we’re fully dropping MPLS in favour of DIA,” said Gould. “Thrive’s project management team continues to help us transition, delivering connectivity solutions with no single point of failure.”
Through SD-WAN technology, Charles Stanley has been able to improve redundancy, and ensure higher availability. According to Gould, this transformation positioned them ahead of the curve, “When Raymond James acquired us, they looked at our setup and said, ‘That’s where we need to get.’”
Enabling Productivity Through Collaboration Tools
Well before the pandemic, Charles Stanley began investing in collaboration technologies such as Cisco Webex and cloud-based video conferencing. Thrive played an instrumental role in identifying, testing, and deploying these solutions.
“We were already rolling out video conferencing, VPN services, and Webex before COVID hit,” Gould explained. “So, when the country shut down, we were in a good place to pivot. That work was all done in collaboration with Thrive.”
The same forward-thinking approach extended to their wireless strategy, where Thrive introduced Meraki’s cloud-managed wireless infrastructure—reducing overhead and simplifying management.
Secure, Supported, and Stable
Resilience has always been a cornerstone of Charles Stanley’s IT strategy. Thrive supported it by introducing technologies that improved business continuity. They brokered a meeting with Cisco to introduce Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) technology, which continues to help them function, running disaster recovery exercises and keeping their websites up 24/7 without any interruption should there be outages, maintenance, or any other issues. Thrive also offered a variety of protection tools—vital at a time when cyber threats were becoming more sophisticated and widespread.
Whether responding to unforeseen network issues or helping implement disaster recovery solutions, Thrive’s technical team brought the right expertise at the right time. Their familiarity with Charles Stanley’s complex infrastructure made troubleshooting faster and project delivery smoother.
“We’ve had the same engineers for years. They know our environment inside and out,” said Gould. “When an issue arises, it’s usually someone who helped design the original solution—that makes a huge difference.”
A Relationship That Evolves with the Business
Following Charles Stanley’s acquisition by Raymond James, some services moved in-house or shifted to new platforms. Still, Thrive remains a critical partner—particularly for UK connectivity and network support.
“Thrive still delivers the connectivity services for our branches,” said Gould. “They also help us manage carriers, which simplifies support dramatically. It’s one number to call. They coordinate everything.”
Valuing Continuity and Longevity
Through decades of business growth and organisational transformation, Charles Stanley’s relationship with Thrive has remained a constant source of stability, expertise, and technological innovation. Even as they evolve within a global framework, a trusted, knowledgeable partnership with a firm who understands their environment continues to be clear. “Having the same account manager and core engineers for years has been incredibly valuable to us.”
By delivering resilient connectivity, enabling strategic advancements, and supporting the business with consistency and care, Thrive has proven to be far more than a service provider—they’ve been a true extension of the Charles Stanley team.
“We’re leveraging the relationships Thrive has with vendors. They help us innovate and make us more resilient. It’s not just a case of just selling something, they make our infrastructure and our architecture more robust.” – Alex Stratton, Head of Technology Services, Charles Stanley
About Thrive
Thrive delivers global technology outsourcing for cybersecurity, Cloud, networking, and other complex IT requirements. Thrive’s NextGen platform enables customers to increase business efficiencies through standardization, scalability, and automation, delivering oversized technology returns on investment (ROI). They accomplish this with advisory services, vCISO, vCIO, consulting, project implementation, solution architects, and a best-in-class subscription-based technology platform. Thrive delivers exceptional high-touch service through its POD approach of subject matter experts and global 24x7x365 SOC, NOC, and centralized services teams. Learn more at www.thrivenextgen.com or follow us on LinkedIn.