Stiles Harold Williams (SHW) are an independent property advisory business specialising in commercial and residential property. SHW have 8 sites across the south of England with the majority of their IT infrastructure residing in their Brighton head-office.
SHW began working with Fifosys in May 2016 and the first order of business was to help them improve the reliability, performance and scalability of their core IT systems. This case-study focuses on the relocation of their core IT systems from head-office to a secure, co-location data centre.
In order to give maximum mobility to their 250+ user environment whilst still maintaining strict security, SHW use a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for delivering a Windows desktop to their staff. Historically, this had been located in the Brighton head-office but this had many issues and risks including:
The result of these limitations was a greater risk of outages and longer downtime.
We were extremely concerned about our redundancy and resilience. We believed considerable investment was required to ensure a secure and reliant system with sufficient contingencies and continuity. Carol Williams, ICT Partner, SHW
Fifosys reviewed the available options for mitigating the risks and concluded that the most effective way to remove the risks was to move to a data-centre where these facilities are provided as standard. To implement the same level of service from the head-office would have been prohibitively expensive.
This was a major change for both the business and the end-users so Fifosys worked closely at all levels with them to ensure it went smoothly.
Based on SHW's requirements, Fifosys implemented a project with the following components:
Fifosys led us through the evaluation process to help us identify the risks and understand the implications of the various options open to us, offering us several alternative solutions and budgetary costs. Our concerns were no redundant power, connectivity, few contingency plans, poor security and high risk. The preferred solution comprehensively addressed our concerns and gives us confidence in our systems. Carol Williams, ICT Partner, SHW
Some of the main benefits to SHW from our solution include:
The entire project was well planned and went incredibly smoothly. Our entire centralised infrastructure was moved to a secure data centre over a single weekend with little disruption to users. Fifosys identified numerous potential risks with the move and prepared with intelligent contingency plans. Fortunately, they weren't needed! Fifosys ensured a potentially high risk move was executed to plan with little need for assistance from us. Carol Williams, ICT Partner, SHW
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