About Royal Holloway, University of London

Originally two colleges that formally became part of the University of London in 1900 and merged in 1985, Royal Holloway, University of London was one of the first institutions to make higher education available to women. Today Royal Holloway continues to display world‐class research in a number of fields, well into the 21^st century, and named as one of the top 25 of all UK Universities in The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021.

Solution 

Following a competitive process, Exponential‐e were awarded a contract, based on milestones, to deliver the fundamental piece of work to enable the university's infrastructure, starting with the merging of Microsoft tenancies.

At the start of the project, Exponential‐e provided a dedicated team to lead design workshops with Royal Holloway's key stakeholders in order to define the migration processes, drawing on their deep knowledge of the existing infrastructure to deliver a comprehensive IT transformation proposal that fulfilled a range of strict T&Cs, budget, risk and continuity requirements.

From then on, continued communication was key to achieving the desired outcomes, with regular meetings taking place to ensure targets were met, budgets were adhered to, and potential complications could be pre‐emptively resolved. To enable administrative staff to continue working effectively throughout the deployment, the university's internal teams were fully briefed on the impending changes, helping to minimise disruption and ensure end users would be properly supported.

Over a 24‐day period, Exponential‐e migrated over 10,000 Office 365 user tenancies for student, alumni and test accounts - a complex operation, but one that proved the value of Exponential‐e's robust risk guarantee. The expatiated migration was achieved using 'Cloud Commander' tooling, which provided high‐speed synchronisation (up to 1TB per hour) of data between tenancies with data fidelity for a broad range of workloads. The result was a fully managed solution for all users, with a dedicated Azure AD Connect deployment and Mail, One Drive and SharePoint migrations between the existing tenancies.

In parallel, Exponential‐e worked with Royal Holloway to create a futureproof active directory, with a move to a single forest, single domain model reducing complexity and administrative overheads. In addition, this sped up authentication and replication, and helped reduce the number of domain controllers required.

A modern hybrid authentication / identity solution was implemented, making intelligent use of Azure Active Directory, ADFS and AD as appropriate. Multi‐factor authentication mitigated cyber security risk by requiring a second form of identification before allowing access to resources and data. At the same time, allowing users to use password hash synchronisation with seamless SSO provided them each with a single set of credentials with which to access services, providing a streamlined user experience that helped drive greater collaboration in the Cloud.

An expanded deployment of Microsoft Office 365 opened the door to full online university status, allowing lectures and seminars to continue via the highly regarded Microsoft Teams platform, with the new infrastructure enabling greater utilisation of the Public Cloud, delivering the increased power, flexibility, and cost control. In particular, a Virtual Desktop solution and a range of tools for multi‐channel communication and collaboration made it easy for students to submit essays and receive their marks remotely.

Finally, to provide a secure, flexible non‐production environment, replica domains and Office 365 environments were deployed, consisting of the 'bare bones' of the primary operating environment.

The partnership between Royal Holloway and Exponential‐e continues to evolve, with remote collaboration opening up new channels of learning, supported by an infrastructure with the power, flexibility and scalability to guarantee consistent performance - all while keeping the student experience at the centre of everything.

Challenges

With the onset of COVID‐19, Royal Holloway re‐focused its 2020/21 IT programme with a view to achieving full online university status, delivering teaching, learning and research through multi‐channel communication and collaboration. To achieve this, the university required a scalable, cost‐effective and high‐performance solution for remote collaboration (e.g. group chat, file sharing, notebook sharing, assessment setting), supported by the right infrastructure.

One of the major limiting factors in this regard was that staff and students were in two separate tenancies, which would need to be consolidated.

In addition to the live environment, the university required a 'non‐production' environment to facilitate controlled software development, testing, and UAT, with minimal operating costs.

With a new academic year fast approaching, it was essential that all these solutions could be delivered within an eight‐week window.

About Gloucester City Homes

Gloucester City Homes is an independent social landlord providing excellent housing management services to over 5,200 tenants. They own and manage around 4,500 rented homes, 501 sheltered housing properties, 270 leasehold properties, 25 commercial units and 21 homeless units.

They are recognised as one of the best housing providers in the country through independent accreditation, including the cabinet office Customer Service Excellence Standard. Gloucester City Homes has ambitious plans to invest in tenants homes, build new homes and create new job opportunities as a major employer in the city of Gloucester.

Solution 

As part of the engagement, Gloucester City Homes wanted to ensure its IT infrastructure refresh would result in better customer service standards. Since all services are delivered down a single piece of fibre, Gloucester City Homes has the flexibility to easily scale or adapt its infrastructure to meet its changing needs. In addition, Exponential-e provided managed service support and security assurance so that GCH didn't have to invest large amounts of resource in managing the system.

As part of becoming a digital-first organisation, Exponential-e provided GCH with Hosted Data Centre services, Server Replication to a second Data Centre as well as Managed Firewall, Infrastructure support. Exponential-e's super-fast 100 Gig Ethernet Network delivered the virtual desktop infrastructure that provides employees with access to a persistent, personal desktop from any device or location for all 120 staff.

In just a short space of time GCH has already seen the benefits that a secure and stable infrastructure delivers. Staff can now move from a desk to a meeting room to home and pick up their desktop in exactly the same state as they left it.

GCH recently underwent a programme where its 5,200 tenants needed to renew their tenancy agreements as part of its separation from the council. Previously this would have been a manual, paper-based process. However, the flexibility of the infrastructure has meant that GCH have been able to use a combination of mobile phones and laptops to run events that allow tenants to refresh their agreements from designated locations throughout the city, something that was more convenient for its tenants and enabled more efficient processing. Instead of tenants completing vast amounts of paperwork and staff entering this on to the system manually, the information could be processed immediately on-site.

Staff at GCH experienced a noticeable improvement to user-experience with quicker log-in and load times, as well faster processing time for data / screen refreshes. For the organisation, this brings significant productivity gains.

• Gloucester City Homes has enabled its employees to work in a more productive way; there has been an increase in the allowance of flexible working, primarily due to the solution provided by Exponential-e allowing employees to work on the same work applications from any location. This in turn leads to better satisfaction amongst the workforce and also improved customer service levels.
• The replication of server data to a second Data Centre means that Gloucester City Homes can rest assured they are protected in the event of a disaster. They can promptly and easily access their data from a secondary source and quickly get their business up and running again if the need arises.

 Challenges

Gloucester City Homes (GCH) has successfully transitioned from operating as an arm's length management organisation with all its ICT infrastructure and services being provided by the local council, to an independent body with complex backend demands controlling everything from renewing tenancy agreements to managing burst drains. The transition has given GCH independent control over housing assets and necessitated all tenants to sign new occupancy agreements.

The separation from the council gave GCH the opportunity to refresh their IT strategy and transfer to new IT infrastructure. They wanted a provider that could offer a diversity of provisioned services and ensure they continue improving customer service levels. In terms of previous support, they had an in-house team managing applications; but also used costly outsourced technical and support resources. A need to enable their staff to work remotely and from various locations, such as within the homes of tenants, also meant that they were looking for a provider that could deliver a remote desktop service and increase the productivity and flexibility of their employees.

About Price Bailey

Founded in 1938, Price Bailey is a leading firm of chartered accountants and business advisers operating throughout the UK, with global connections. Their clients range from high net worth individuals to publicly listed businesses.

Price Bailey has 26 partners and over 300 professional and support staff. It has eight offices situated in East Anglia, London, the Channel Islands and the Caribbean - serving local SMEs.

Solution 

A key requirement for Price Bailey was the need to review their existing WAN. Exponential-e took on the project of implementing a new WAN which enabled Price Bailey to benefit from improved connection speeds of up to 25 times faster than their previous Network. Plus, by utilising Exponential-e's Network they were able to increase the control over their bandwidth and access services privately and securely.

Their in-house Data Centre was no longer suitable and so Price Bailey agreed to move in to one of Exponential-e's Data Centres. Not only did this mean that they now receive a managed service which flags up any issues pro-actively and is within a state of the art secure facility, but it also provides enhanced disaster recovery facilities – enabling Price Bailey to have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place should they need to use it.

Their aging phone system, which had been in place over 20 years, was no longer fit for purpose and so the process of moving their existing telephone system on to a hosted system began. This process continued across the business's estate of offices and has enhanced communication functionality for employees. The new phone system also provided the firm with additional reporting metrics and enhanced security.

As their existing Citrix server farm could no longer handle the speed of growth and requirements for use, Price Bailey instead implemented a Desktop-as-a-Service solution. This allowed them to increase the number of seats that they could provide whilst lessening the strain on their existing legacy infrastructure. In future it will also allow them to increase provisioning of virtual desktops as required - meaning that they can easily match the growth of the firm, and adjust spend aligned to this.

 Challenges

Price Bailey had an existing Wide Area Network (WAN) that had been in place since 2008 and, despite upgrades, it couldn't cope with the growth in their business – both in terms of staff and office locations. As the firm continued to grow they were faced with issues of slow speed and poor connectivity, which led to frustration for users and also a decrease in productivity.

Their IT services were primarily based in-house, but with their fast paced growth this was no longer the ideal solution. Instead Price Bailey decided that they needed to outsource some of this and instead rely on managed services that would be able to support their business growth.

In 2014 Price Bailey were looking to relocate one of their offices, and merge it with another, to create their largest site yet. This involved a great amount of work and was not something that could be managed internally.

As part of this move and merger Price Bailey needed to review their existing WAN, relocate their in-house Data Centre, review their Disaster Recovery plan, upgrade their telephone system (which had been in place since the 1990's) and review their struggling Citrix server farm.

Not only was there a requirement for all this to be done, but it had to happen within just 3 to 4 months, a timeframe that was too tight for the Price Bailey team to handle themselves - and why they instead looked to Exponential-e for assistance.

Features

• Network is up to 25 times faster.
• Managed Data Centre services replace an in-house Data Centre, enabling the IT department to do more whilst the company's key assets are protected.
• Migration to the Exponential-e telephony system has allowed employees to embrace the benefits of more advanced features and functionality.
• VDI has enhanced the opportunities for employees to work in remote locations, and also reduced the strain on their legacy systems.