IT support case studies

ISBA Conference 2010

The Independent Schools' Bursars Association is a charitable company that provides support to bursars (school business managers) in independent schools and promotes good practice. We have provided both managed IT and web development services to the ISBA since 2001, and in addition to this, we also provide an onsite support service to their annual conference.

This year, it was held at the Harrogate International Conference Centre, and was attended by over 500 delegates. Mike Snoek, one of our support engineers was responsible for putting together the internet café as well as liaising with the conference centre IT team, and generally providing support to those that needed it over the three day period.

Jonathan Cook of the ISBA said: "The conference went really well - thank you Impreza for your continued support to us.  Mike was quite excellent; he's a really nice chap and all the IT worked a dream. Mike not only did IT, he was also ever willing to lend a hand to whatever as crisis arose. He was great".

Lavenders Care Home

One of our clients is Lavenders Care Home based in the centre of West Malling, Kent. Lavenders is a family run 58 bedroom residential care home for the elderly, founded in 1982.  They are one of the finest residential care homes in Kent, and have been a customer of ours since 2006.

Over those years we have carried out a variety of work for them on an ad hoc basis. This includes the set up of servers and PC's, installation of memory for servers and PC's, Symantec renewals and software updates as well as general IT support for when problems occur.

Lavenders office manager, Lynne Hay, says "we have always found the response from Impreza to be prompt, polite and effiecient no matter what the problem has been".

Please contact us for more information or to register your company for pay as you go support.

Move and migrate

Talon Manufacturing are a Kent-based manufacturer of pipe fittings. Due to their ongoing growth they found that it was necessary to move their Strood office to larger premises located next to their Gillingham factory. Talon approached Impreza to assist with the move, whilst also planning a migration from their existing Small Business Server 2003 to the latest 2008 version on new hardware. The existing SBS2003 server has suffered from intermittent faults, and the hardware was some years old and deemed to be a business risk.

We treated this as two separate projects; the office move, followed by the migration. The move involved combining the Strood and Gillingham networks into one. Once we were happy that the system was working in its new configuration, we began the migration to SBS2008.

SBS2003 is now seven years old, and has proved itself as the industry standard solution for businesses with up to 75 network users. Much like 2003, 2008 is available in two editions; Standard and Premium. However, with 2008, it is now possible to run the Premium edition across two servers, rather than the previous 2003 edition limiting you to one. This provides a much more scalable solution, enabling businesses to benefit from the cost effectiveness of SBS, whilst knowing they have a solution that can grow with their business.

Talon's office move and server migration to SBS2008 was seamless, and they suffered minimal downtime. They now benefit from improved remote access, increased levels of security, a future proofed system and the peace of mind provided by new server hardware.

Please contact us for more information about migrating Small Business Server 2003 to 2008.

Remote Access

Alltask are one of the UK's fastest growing construction companies, and are always looking at ways to give them a competitive edge, so it's important that their IT is up to the job.

With many of their staff working on sites around the UK, it was becoming difficult to share information, and ensure that all staff were working to the same set of company standards.

Following a system audit, Impreza recommended a "Terminal Services" solution which would provide multiple users the facility to simultaneously access the network from any internet enabled PC. 

Terminal Services is Microsoft's solution for remote workers, allowing users to access a virtual desktop, just as if they were sitting at a PC in the office. It's fast, simple to implement and requires no additional staff training, giving remote users the ability to work in a completely familiar environment.