Bristol IT Company merged with MDS Technologies to become Assured Digital Technologies in April 2020.

Background

Bristol Music Trust is an independent organisation and registered charity created to develop Colston Hall’s artistic programme and promote music and music making in Bristol. Bristol IT Company already work with Colston Hall and have previously enabled unified working with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

Challenge

Bristol Music Trust (BMT) have been running a bespoke hosted remote desktop solution since 2013, whilst this solution met their requirements at the time, changes to their business meant they required more flexibility and simplicity for BMT staff to work efficiently from anywhere, regardless of connectivity issues. As a registered charity, Bristol Music Trust required the solution to be more cost effective than their current bespoke solution.

Solution

Having been an IT support provider for Bristol Music Trust for many years, Bristol IT Company were able to use this knowledge of the customer, combined with their project management and implementation skills to carry out the most effective digital transformation for BMT. The solution included the implementation of:

• Microsoft 365 Enterprise Subscription, which combines the productivity tools and features of Office 365, with the security of Windows 10. By rolling out the Microsoft subscription, we were able to implement:
  • Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive for company data
  • Drive mapping software to allow easy access to SharePoint data as a standard network drive
  • Microsoft Azure Active Directory – Used for Centralized Cloud Authentication
  • Microsoft Intune – Device management for laptops/desktops/mobile devices, allowing Bristol IT to deploy all software applications and policies from one central location.
  • Microsoft Teams – Enabling unified communications for BMT staff with internal and external parties.
• High availability web hosting for all Bristol Music Trust websites, using Amazon Web Services (AWS) ensuring their sites are always online and running at optimum levels.
• Onsite virtualisation host for the software that needs to be run on premise, with full Microsoft 365 integration, and offsite backup and replication for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.

Carrying out this digital transformation allows BMT to future-proof their business and empowers their staff to work efficiently and flexibly anywhere and from any device. To keep costs low for Bristol Music Trust, Bristol IT Company used their significant experience in levying supplier charity discounts to produce the most cost-effective solution.

Result

By utilising Bristol IT Company’s technical expertise and vast implementation experience, Bristol Music Trust were able to successfully move to their new solution with minimal downtime. The various charity discounts offered by Microsoft and Amazon, levied by Bristol IT,  delivered flexible working at an affordable price. What’s more the digital transformation project has meant that the Colston Hall Education Team can offer virtual music lessons via Microsoft Teams, whilst in the current pandemic, something that previously wouldn’t have been possible.

“We were very pleased with the efficient and professional way in which BIT transitioned the whole company very smoothly over to the new system.  It enables much better team working for our staff and is a robust and effective IT solution.  Having an up to date business IT solution has enabled us to facilitate home-working across the business as necessary, and deal with the current lockdown situation in a way which just would not have been possible before.”

Clare Jack, Chief Operating Officer