Supporting Dorset Coding Day
8 October 2024
X-Net director Gordon Fong was at Wool Primary School helping the pupils participate in Dorset Coding Day.
This is an event aimed at bringing people from businesses into school to support an activity showcasing computer programming and given them an opportunity to ask questions.
We are hugely supportive of this campaign by the Digital Dorset team within Dorset Council. It is also an opportunity for anyone to see what the classroom environment is like, which will have changed a lot in some ways to their own childhood experience.
The pupils were using the Scratch graphical programming environment by MIT.
It was great to see pupils helping each other and the diverse range of abilities. One pupil asked whether GTA7 would be released, but unfortunately it wasn’t something we know about.
Nathan Fowler, our first university placement
16 August 2024
Nathan Fowler is X-Net's first university placement and is studying Cyber Security at Bournemouth University.
He will be helping us in many different areas of automated security benchmarking, network testing, managed devices and even helping with the company's social media output. Our aim is to give Nathan as much exposure to the wider reach that X-Net gets involved in, both on and off the Dorset Innovation Park. One key role this year is getting involved with the Army Cyber Spartan event as part of a Red Team, using the CybExer training range.
X-Net is an accredited Living Wage Employer
8 July 2024
X-Net is proud to confirm it has been accredited as a Living Wage Employer.
The decision by the Living Wage Foundation demonstrates X-Net’s commitment to supporting their employees and is the latest accreditation for the Dorset-based organisation. It follows being recognised as a Disability Confident Employer in 2023.
X-Net was previously known as Kimcell and traded under the Datacenta Hosting and e-mango brands. From its base in Dorset Innovation Park, Winfrith Newburgh, it is actively supporting the growth of Dorset as a hub for well-paid, highly skilled jobs.
Joeanne Lawrence, X-Net Director - Delivery & People, commented: “X-Net is committed to supporting its employees, particularly during these tough economic times, and this accreditation from the Living Wage Foundation demonstrates just one of the ways we’re doing that.
“Without the people who make up the X-Net team, we wouldn’t be able to deliver the reliable services our clients have come to expect. That’s why we’re always looking for positive ways to develop our teams and enhance our ‘people offer’.
“This commitment to pay a real living wage is just one of many steps we are looking making over the coming months to improve the benefits we offer employees at X-Net.”
X-Net has been delivering technical and business expertise for our clients for nearly 40 years. It operates a 24/7-manned data centre and provides hosting, engineering, and consulting services for clients in both the private and public sector.
As an accredited Living Wage employer, X-Net is committed to paying a minimum of £12 per hour to all its employees (£13.15 in London). It is a voluntary commitment, compared with the National Living Wage - the legal minimum an employee must pay.
Issued by the Living Wage Foundation annually, the real Living Wage is the only UK wage rate based on the cost of living. It is voluntarily paid by over 15,000 UK businesses who believe their staff deserve a wage which meets every-day needs.
Kearns Technology Inc from Canada and X-Net worked together to connect the Stars at Glastonbury
1 July 2024
The remote location and sheer numbers of festival goers poses significant challenges for reliable internet connectivity. This year, thanks to the innovative efforts of KTI and X-Net, those challenges were met head-on.
When Psiphon approached KTI with a unique request to develop a proof of concept (POC) for secure and reliable connectivity at Glastonbury, KTI's CEO saw an opportunity to showcase the company's capabilities on an international stage. Recognizing the need for a local partner, KTI reached out to X-Net to create a robust solution that could meet the festival's complex requirements.
The project, completed in just four weeks, showcased the combined strengths of both companies. KTI led the development of the technology stack, leveraging their expertise in secure, scalable IT infrastructure. X-Net contributed their local knowledge, configuration, build and testing, and access to the location.
One of the most critical aspects of the project was the seamless export of equipment from Canada to the UK. KTI's CEO personally oversaw this process, ensuring that all necessary documentation was in order and coordinating with customs officials. Thanks to this hands-on approach, the equipment cleared customs in just two days, a remarkable achievement given the tight timeline.
David Happy awarded MBE
14 June 2024
X-Net would like to congratulate Dave Happy on being awarded the MBE as part of the 2024 Birthday Honours for services to Telecommunications and to Technology sector.
David is the Managing Director of Telint and we have worked with him on various 5G projects as part of Dorset Council winning funding bids for innovative programmes (under our previous name of Kimcell Ltd).
Supporting D3IP Autonomy Unleashed Event
3 June 2024
A recap on X-Net supporting the Autonomy Unleashed event hosted by D3IP on the Dorset Innovation Park. This was a full day of expert knowledge sharing on the use and future of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with regards to topics such as ethics, artificial intelligence, cyber risks, and emerging technologies.
You can read a summary of the day’s event here : D3IP Autonomy Unleashed
D3IP have a future event in October covering Connected Vehicles.
X-Net showing local school pupils a future in Digital
23 May 2024
Year 5 pupils from South Hill Primary School visited the BattleLab, in the Dorset Innovation Park, as part of an event by Dorset Council to show what a future in technology can bring. They applied innovative thinking across three challenges focused on games design, marine engineering and logistics. In other words, they made plasticine boats and carried an egg across obstacles on a Segway.
Our colleague, Heather Byrom, gave them some insights from her degree studies in Games Design, and the world of opportunities open to them.
The school shared their own blog post: South Hill Dorset School News
X-Net Director visiting Innovation Spaces around the UK
16 May 2024
One of our Directors, Gordon Fong, is embarking on a personal project to visit many other Innovation Centres, Science Parks, Technology Clusters and Business Hubs across the UK to find out what innovation means to them, how they build thriving communities for innovation to happen, and to understand what other services and support mechanisms are important for regional economic development.
Gordon’s first visit was to the Fareham Innovation Centre, and you can follow his travels on his blog https://parklife.gordonfong.com
X-Net supporting careers fair for SEND pupils
9 May 2024
Dorset Careers Hub held an event at Merley House in Wimborne called “Discover Your Future – Skills and Transition Fair” for young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities.
X-Net supported the event by sharing what kind of jobs roles are available within an Internet hosting business, encouraging pupils with their studies, and even had a demonstration of how the Internet works.
X-Net has achieved the Disability Confident Employer status and wants to share to other employers the importance of widening our view of potential candidates and what we can do to offer opportunities for those from a SEND background.
DWP : Disability Confident Campaign
5G DONE project
24 April 2024
As an update, progress is being made on the 5G DONE (Dorset Open Network Ecosystem) Project of which X-Net (formerly known as Kimcell Ltd) is a technical partner of, alongside Dorset Council and others.
Dorset Council is part of new £7 million government funded project to test how an open network of telecoms equipment could one day improve connectivity in harder to reach rural areas.
Dorset Council News: £7m Project in Rural Dorset
Dorset already has the largest expanse of 5G test infrastructure that connects the Dorset Innovation Park down to Lulworth Ranges, to give many use cases for clients in terms on Land, Sea and Air domains.
Dorset Counil : What is the 5G DONE project?
Doina passes her CISSP
10 April 2024
We want to congratulate our colleague, Doina Savu, on passing her Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) exam and even more impressive being that she is not one of our technical engineers.
Doina is our Director of Compliance and has been with the company for 13 years and overseas our ISO accreditations.
X-Net Name Change
1 April 2024
Over the past 30+ years, the X-Net name has been strong in the consulting sector working on projects ranging from telecoms privatisation through to large scale IT procurement projects, both on the supplier and client side.
On 1 April 2024 we changed the name of Kimcell Ltd to X-Net (Services) Ltd to reflect the fact that the X-Net name is now permeating the work that we are involved in across the Digital, Data, Defence, Law Enforcement and National Security sectors.
The business continues to incorporate the web application development capability from the e-mango brand and the managed services of Datacenta Hosting.
We have an end-to-end capability that can help clients understand what they need through our consulting experts, that can engineer and deliver a solution through our technical team, through to on-going support from our service team.
The country, from UK Government to the private sector, is facing many challenges that needs a partner with capabilities and facilities to work with. X-Net has moved into that space now.