Southampton Freight Services Ltd: Powering 20+ Years of Trusted IT Partnership

Southampton Freight Services (SFS) are a fully independent, family run freight forwarder and logistics provider, offering global services by air, sea, road and international courier. 

Formed in 1998, SFS have been a customer of Albacore throughout their history. We’ve supported them and grown with them as they scaled up the business. We’ve worked with them on multiple site moves, installation and replacement of servers and workstations, significant growth of staff, changes and developments in their operational systems, and the establishment of their New York office. 

The core of services Albacore provide to SFS start with unlimited telephone and remote support for their employees. Our telephone helpdesk is always there when needed, and our proactive monitoring assures issues are investigated through automated and engineer led actions, often before an issue is noticed. We provide a complete portfolio of IT services to SFS ranging from domain name management to server support. 

2023 has been a year of consolidation and growth for SFS. The year started with a backup, network and server upgrade. We also completed a refresh and a tidy up in the server cabinet as part of this project. This often overlooked background task is key to ensuring a customer network remains supportable and functional. The SFS team plan continuously to provide mitigation of various scenarios, so this project also focussed on their recently enhanced procedure to ensure key elements of the solution remain powered up during a prolonged power outage so that they can continue to serve their customers with minimal disruption. 

Albacore have provided SFS with near real time replication for Disaster Recovery (DR) purposes on their on-premise servers since 2016, but this solution was redeployed in 2023 using a more stable replication mechanism, allowing faster failover and better ongoing monitoring. 

Another key enhancement undertaken was the rollout of Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) to all SFS users. MFA is now enabled by default for all new starters across Albacore’s customer base, but circling back proactively across our customer base to leverage modern security principles is a central aspect of our services. 

Another major project for 2023 was the expansion to an additional unit adjoining their current premises. Albacore managed the installation of structured cabling and additional hardware for the new space, completing a smooth onsite deployment of the equipment, ready for the users to sit down and start work. 

The digitisation of the freight industry is taking place. Albacore have seen increased demand for wireless network and Internet access within warehouse spaces as processes become more technology based. SFS are no exception, having deployed Albacore managed wireless access throughout their warehouse space in 2023. The solution offers coverage throughout the warehouse and drives efficiency as well as reducing carbon footprint by reducing printed outputs.

“IT underpins everything we do at SFS – without our systems we simply cannot serve our customers. Albacore are our key technology partner and I know they are there for me, both on the helpdesk and working in the background to make sure things run smoothly for us. They consult with me to plan improvements and renewals to our IT solution that improves reliability. I’ve worked with the Albacore team for more than 20 years and would strongly recommend their services.”

Southampton Freight Services Ltd
Ross Negus – Director