Rebuilding confidence through a complete IT overhaul.

The Challenge

A perceived lack of confidence in the level of support being provided by its previous IT support - along with poor response times and some fundamental failings regarding security and disaster recovery - led the National Football Museum to seek an alternative provider, when IDT were invited to join the tender process.

The challenge for IDT was to give the Museum confidence in its IT again. Our tender process was broken into two elements: First, the initial takeover, assessment and ongoing fault resolution in the short to medium term. Second, the ongoing support, system advice and guidance that had ultimately been missing up until now. After a full review of its IT infrastructure and associated support, the museum made the decision to outsource its entire IT operation to IDT.

The Solution

IDT’s team of engineers surveyed all sites thoroughly, liaised with staff regarding flaws and failings in the system and set about correcting this straight away. Fundamental faults with the existing infrastructure were quickly identified and a proposal was put forward to simplify and consolidate the existing Windows server network.

Redundant, aging or under-used servers were decommissioned and the over engineered Hyper-V network was migrated to VmWare. Back end storage was improved, and the onsite/offsite backup was upgraded to give faster and improved disaster recovery options. The work was completed live without disruption and invisibly to the museum over a number of weeks.

Impact

Because the Museum had used to having downtime, IDT was able to give them some much needed confidence in its IT, including systems which had seen large investment over the past few years but which they weren’t getting value for money from. Once this much needed confidence had returned, staff usage increased as reliability improved. Since IDT took over support and made improvements to the infrastructure, further investment and improvements have been made to build on these new and solid foundations.

The Museum now has a direct line to speak with IDT’s support team and the overall impression is that fault finding and resolution times are now vastly improved. IDT’s human touch and willingness to speak with the Museum’s staff without using confusing jargon or tech speak means we are made to feel part of the team, being seen as the Museum’s IT Dept rather than an outsourced ‘at distance’ service provider

Quotes

“I have nothing but praise for IDT. They stepped in at a moment of crisis for us and put into place systems that made us secure which is vitally important for a national museum. They give me a 100% confidence which has meant that we have been able to respond to Covid 19 and working at home seamlessly, with all our IT needs met at all times.

“IDT’s communication and responsiveness to problems is excellent, nothing is too much trouble from forgotten passwords to more complicated issues. IDT staff visit our site on a regular basis and have taken the time to get to know our staff and our infrastructure. IDT have also given us advice and support on other technical and website hosting issues, decoding technical jargon and saving us time and money. Their team are very well recruited and managed, as they are patient, calm and highly professional in their work. They are liked and trusted by my staff and you can’t ask for any more than that”

Tim Desmond, CEO, The National Football Museum