Poole Townsend

The Company
Poole Townsend is one of the largest independent solicitors, estate agents and financial services firms in the South Lakes and Furness area. With six offices employing 120 staff, it is well known in the region as one of the few companies to offer a 'one stop shop' for legal, financial and property advice. The company, headquartered in Barrow-in-Furness, is highly regarded, with a history dating back to the 1860's.

The Problem
As the sole IT support for the whole company across all sites, ICT manager Emma Johnson knew only too well the problems facing the company and its infrastructure.

"All our offices are linked together but in terms of communications, the resilience just wasn't there," explained Emma . "Our systems would go down on average once a fortnight. As we were moving away from being a paper-based operation, with everything moved onto computers, this had a huge impact on our business. Every half an hour that our systems are down has an adverse affect."

Emma also found that as the only IT staff member, providing sufficient support as the company grew was becoming increasingly difficult. "We were expanding quickly, we had to invest in more support, our hardware needed updating, we were at the stage where our network and infrastructure needed replacing to cope with increasing staff numbers. We were facing a drastic change."

The company also had to take into account the fast-changing nature of the workplace itself. It wanted to be able to offer its staff the option of working from home, with secure, remote access to all files and systems that they needed in order to carry out their work effectively, as if they were still in the office.

The Solution
The company researched possible solutions to resolve the support and reliability issues, including the option of staying with its existing provider. After several discussions, and hearing recommendations from existing customers, the decision was made to bring in Carnforth-based SystemHost, to provide a managed IT service solution.

SystemHost is providing a Silver Support package to Poole Townsend. All of the company's servers are now located at SystemHost's data centre, and SystemHost has provided new hardware, as well as hosting all the software. Given the company's mix of businesses, this means that they are hosting several different packages. SystemHost provides back-up to all services, plus support, upgrades and data recovery, with all data backed up and copied off-site.



Football Foundation

The Company
With an annual income of £45m, The Football Foundation is the UK's largest sports charity. It is funded by the Football Association (FA), the Premier League, Sport England, and the Government, and its role is to fund sporting facilities and community initiatives.

The Foundation, established in 2000 and growing steadily, was formerly based in the Football Association's premises in Soho Square, but has recently moved to the Premier League offices in Gloucester Place. When the Foundation moved to its new larger facilities in 2006 it had a unique opportunity to reconsider its IT infrastructure and services.

The Problem
Prior to the office move, the FA provided all of the Football Foundation's IT services as part of its tenancy including all the core services and desktop hardware. The IT systems and core applications were managed by the Foundation but on leaving the old office building the Football Foundation became totally responsible for its own IT.

This allowed them to look at their IT requirements from an open perspective. Dean Burnell, ICT programme manager, explained: "All of our services were due for renewal, and we didn't have too many legacy systems to consider. It was a rare opportunity for us to start from scratch and design IT services around the needs of our unique organisation."

The Solution
The Football Foundation's main issue was that the organisation could grow and contract at a fast rate at any time. Certain schemes that they run have a limited life span, so Burnell knew that they needed an on-tap resource that was flexible and scalable.

The Foundation was also moving towards remote working, and regionalising work. Burnell continued: "We were also starting to look at IT infrastructure just at the time that the London bombings took place. It highlighted the issue of disaster recovery, and business continuity."

Burnell was also keen to find a BS (British Standards) accredited supplier, an apparent rarity in IT services suppliers.

Having read about SystemHost and its managed IT service, Burnell was impressed by how it had approached similar problems and systems for other clients. He was initially concerned by the distance from London to SystemHost's base in Carnforth, Lancashire, but was swayed by its remote hosting offering. He realised that (among many other factors) the location was an advantage in the event of a terrorist attack as it was away from all major cities.

After reviewing other suppliers, Burnell selected SystemHost, who are now providing the Football Foundation with its Silver Service offering. This managed service solution includes amongst other things: one hour response; business continuity systems which cover all eventualities; all equipment such as terminals, PCs, laptops, iPAQs, mobile messaging devices, hardware, printers; management of all equipment; system and software updates; and an SSL VPN connection.

As the office move was not immediate, the managed service solution was rolled out in two phases. The Foundation now has new policies on how to use the new system, for example stricter password policies, and so this has also brought about a cultural change within the organisation. Although the IT department is new, all necessary data was migrated to the new SystemHost data services. The processes and systems are new, and the staff have enthusiastically embraced these new, more secure processes.


Alitex

The Company
Hampshire-based Alitex Greenhouses has been designing and manufacturing greenhouses and glasshouses for over 50 years for professional gardeners, garden designers, architects and stately homes. Customers include The National Trust, RHS Wisley and the Sir George Staunton Country Park in Hampshire. The company, which creates over 150 structures each year, employs 40 staff including designers, engineers and salespeople, achieving a turnover of £4million.

The Problem
As the success of the company grew, leading to a move to its current location five years ago, Alitex's computer systems became increasingly essential to the running of the company. These systems had grown organically over the years and although this was relatively organised it was still sporadic.

At one stage there were 25 users, with 25 different platforms, each with its own set of problems. Although everything was networked, the system was becoming cumbersome and increasingly wasteful, especially as there was no dedicated IT manager. Although it spent £10-15,000 on computer costs each year, Alitex was also spending double that in lost time. For example if a printer broke, they just stopped using it until they bought a new one, which wasted time. The system was becoming a burden.

The company had no overall IT strategy, and although it would bring in companies to fix problems or install equipment, Alitex found that these companies would then disappear and it would be left with the same problems six months later.

Tom Hall, director at Alitex, explained: "We had no handle on the information we had on the system. Our security was weak at best, and back-ups were non-existent. We had a couple of sales staff off-site who couldn't log in and view the customer database or essential file servers, so they were even more 'remote' than they should have been. Conversely, these remote staff had information in their heads that they couldn't add to the system and about which the company had no knowledge. And it was a headache when problems arose. Instead of fixing the problem, we just learned to live with it."

Alitex felt that it had reached a situation where it never knew how close to catastrophe it might be. The potential dangers motivated them to find a solution.

The Solution
Alitex has a range of applications that need to be managed - design applications, accounting software, Microsoft Office, a customer database, shopfloor software and hardware, all working in isolation with limited support. Said Hall: "By sweeping our problems under the carpet it was affecting our efficiency. We wanted to move the company forward but felt we couldn't until we had got to grips with our IT."

He contacted SystemHost for help in managing Alitex's IT systems, and initially didn't believe what they promised. For Hall, it was too good to be true: "When they came to see us, and we sat down and discussed our problems, I basically didn't believe them when they told us what they could do for us. They said we didn't need to worry any more about security, or consistency, or equipment, or back-up. They had all the answers, and in the end we could see they were right. And although it doesn't appear cheap, it is all-inclusive and we do know now exactly what we'll be spending over the next five years. In the long run we will save on the unnecessary costs we were incurring before."

Hall found that having spoken to other companies, none of them were prepared to take ownership of the IT and to provide support for it. Alitex needed a system that worked, and if there was a problem someone would be there to resolve it, and this is what SystemHost offered.

SystemHost has refreshed the vast majority of Alitex's existing desktop technology, and now provides ongoing management and support of all Alitex's hardware and software, together with data back-up at its secure data centre in Lancashire.

Hall was extremely impressed with the hard work and dedication put in by SystemHost. "They didn't charge anything until the solution was up and running. They worked incredibly hard, spending two weeks down here to set it all up. You just don't get this commitment from anywhere else."

The Benefits
Alitex's data is now securely backed-up, and Hall can leave the management of licences, software and hardware upgrades, and the management of the system as a whole, to SystemHost. There are no longer any concerns about security as all the firewalls and security issues are nailed down with a solution that is tailor-made for Alitex's needs.

"SystemHost does act like our IT department now," said Hall. "And as a result, technology at Alitex is now a strength, not a weakness. If we want to implement a change, for example new software, we can do this in days. We couldn't do that before, but now we have the foundations to build on and we can plan for business growth. Now we can move forwards and not backwards. We have a more sophisticated IT infrastructure than any of our competitors and we will have for the next five years."

The solution, which was implemented in November 06, has provided Alitex with an essential element of a successful business - Alitex knew that as well as getting the culture right, and the product quality right, it was also essential to get the IT right.