In February 2005 West London based housing and property managers, Orchard & Shipman plc, merged with Campsie and Co, the chartered surveyors based in Windsor and Staines. The deal has put them alongside the top 50 property service groups in the UK and the company now employs well over 100 people spread over its 5 offices.
One of the challenges that the group faced as part of the merger, was IT. The two companies IT systems needed to be amalgamated and additional resources were required to cope with the support and day to day running of the network.
In March 2005 Orchard & Shipman decided to outsource the job of managing their IT to Connexion.
The biggest priority was to standardise. Software applications needed to be consolidated, by deciding on which of the various applications best fitted the company’s future needs. Once this had been determined, Connexion designed an infrastructure to facilitate the delivery of the applications to the users across the enterprise.
Over the next 9 months Connexion consolidated the network into a single Active Directory with group policies for the efficient management of the network and its users. The group policies have made it possible for the users to log into any workstation on the network and access the information and applications that they need to do their jobs.
A Virtual Private Network - VPN, between all of the offices, with automatic failover, has also been a crucial part of the whole project, as the users across the whole organisation require constant access to information and applications based at their Headoffice, therefore Internet downtime is costly. At each location Connexion utilised an SDSL Line from Easynet, and an ADSL line from Altohiway along with Sonicwall firewalls. By implementing a solution from two separate ISP's, with automatic failover, Orchard & Shipman have cost effective, yet fast and very robust interoffice connectivity.
Now Orchard & Shipman's network infrastructure is working reliably and efficiently, Connexion have worked with them to help implement new technology, to bring further improvements.
Connexion have developed a good understanding of Orchard & Shipman's business, which is invaluable in working with them to provide advice and help implement new Technology. In addition to assisting Orchard & Shipman with procuring new software for different areas of their business, Connexion have provided Orchard and Shipman with some bespoke solutions which they have developed in-house, including:
As part of our ongoing managed service, Connexion ensure that the network is running efficiently, and securely, servers are monitored, backups are monitored and disaster recovery procedures are in place.
Connexion also provide support to all the users via their helpdesk, Revelation. This ensures that user's issues are prioritised and resolved efficiently and it also facilitates the production of reports for the management team at Orchard & Shipman.
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Telephone: 0118 9209600 - Email: info@connexion.co.uk
Address: Connexion House, 2 Cutbush Court, Danehill, Lower Earley, Reading, Berkshire RG6 4UW
