Anchor Trust
Simplify new and existing IT equipment installation
Background
Anchor Trust is a not-for-profit organisation which helps older people live safely, securely and independently. It does so by providing a variety of services catering for many of their most commonly encountered needs. Anchor Trust has more than 9,500 employees (including over 2,000 who depend on IT services and tools) and over 1,000 separate UK locations (of which a large proportion are residential care homes).
Prior to Anchor entering into a Managed PC Support Agreement with ISC, Anchor Trust’s desktop services, servers and systems were managed in-house by IT technical teams based at Anchor’s regional office in Kidlington, Oxford. The team comprised approximately 25 IT staff, excluding developers.
Requirement
Existing hardware contracts on desktops were costing Anchor dearly in time, resources and money. In one case, excessive expense was cited as the reason for sending an ISC engineer to a Trust site in order to swap-out a PC unit; Anchor subsequently had to arrange a follow-up visit, from its own desktop support team, simply to reload the software.
Due to IT market forces, it proved difficult and time-consuming to recruit qualified and skilled staff to manage attrition.
ISC and Anchor Trust collaborated jointly on a solution to improve the client’s PC support deliverables and reduce its overheads.
Solution
The ISC solution proposed substantial savings could be achieved in both time and cost if Anchor’s replacement machines were loaded with software prior to shipping to site. With this in mind Anchor decided to outsource the management of its entire desktop infrastructure to ISC.
One year later, the services were extended to include Anchor Trust servers. The majority are hosted at ISC’s Data Centre in Huntingdon, with remaining servers managed remotely by ISC’s Network Operations Centre (NOC).
Benefits
A major benefit and key driver behind the joint solution is Anchor’s ability to focus on its core activity of providing care services for older people. Other benefits include reduced costs; less dependency on Anchor IS resources, and the assurance of professional delivery from a company whose main provision is IT.
Although Anchor naturally retains responsibility for strategic, managerial and business decisions, ISC now provides day-to-day management of the IT systems.
Summary of Services Provided
- Backup Tape Management & Storage (inc. 6 remote sites)
- Consultancy
- Delivery to Desk
- Desktop Rollouts
- Engineering Support for both Server and Desktop
- Image Creation and Management
- Managed Supply of Hardware and Consumables
- Onsite Engineers
- Outsourcing: IT infrastructure support
- Project Management
- Remote Server Monitoring
- Server and Desktop Maintenance
- Server Hosting
