THE PROBLEM
Alphascan were asked to come and assess the current infrastructure of a Financial Services Business, a medium sized company that was planning further developments and expansions of services within the South of England and beyond. As with any business in this day and age, especially where expansion is involved, the IT requirements are an imperative foundation which allows a business to function effectively and proactively.
THE ANALYSIS
The business consisted of 4 sites. A Head Office in London and 3 smaller satellite offices located in Southampton, Bristol and Oxford, which together were running a total of eight servers. All servers were using Windows Server 2008 technology and had limited resources which was the first issue to be addressed, especially as mainstream support for Windows Server 2008 ceased in January 2020.
THE SOLUTION
Alphascan sourced some new, powerful servers and built them with Windows Server 2019 and MS Exchange 2019. In order to retain the data currently held on the servers, they were cohabited with the existing servers to allow a seamless transfer of data, and once complete the old servers were removed and decommissioned.
As well as the server technologies being dated and out of support, the client machines were also running Windows 7, for which Microsoft ceased support for, again in January 2020. Therefore all the client machines were upgraded to Windows 10, added back to the domain and tested to ensure full functionality.
Using bespoke software is very common with businesses and this often means liaising with 3rd party suppliers. Alphascan spent a lot of time working with external suppliers to ensure the data and functionality of the non-standard software remained intact during the upgrade. Due to the close working relationship that was formed, this was carried out flawlessly.
THE RESULTS
Within the timeframe of 2 weeks, from start to finish, the business was brought up to date with current, more efficient and robust technologies. Removing any of the risks associated with dated or unsupported hardware and software. All work was carried out with the minimum possible downtime, with majority being undertaken out of hours to ensure as little downtime and disruption as possible.
The firm in question became a Fully Managed IT Support customer of Alphascan’s off the back of this project.