Member Article

Knowledge Provides Technology Support for Two Local Schools

Knowledge I.T has recently been awarded contracts to deliver managed IT support services to two local schools, St. Joseph’s in Hebburn and St. Wilfrid’s in South Shields. Although neither school is connected, both have similar backgrounds and were part funded by the ‘Building Schools for the future’ campaign, whereby their IT infrastructure was previously managed and supported by a national supplier. However, both schools decided that they wanted to bring back the control of their technology in-house and began to look for a local IT provider with a view to finding a more bespoke service.

With the growing reliance on a school’s IT infrastructure to provide vital educational resources, it is critical to ensure that there is no downtime; especially during school hours – therefore, reliability is key. As a result of a selection process, they eventually chose Knowledge I.T and its ‘One Touch’ proactive managed support service. Knowledge has gained an enviable reputation working in the education sector, including Cloud Computing projects with Westfield School in Fenham and award-winning infrastructure projects with Cardinal Hume in Gateshead. The ‘One Touch’ services are managed at their North East network operations centre, where client’s networks are pro-actively monitored by a dedicated team of support professionals.

The migration from their old supplier to Knowledge I.T was a particular challenge as there was only a small window of opportunity between the end of the school year and the publishing of exam results. Knowledge achieved this by seamlessly moving the active directory and databases from their previous supplier in London to the schools own self-managed infrastructure, with no downtime. In addition to the managed service, St. Joseph’s also now backup all of their data to one of Knowledge I.T’s North East based Data centres using a highly secure backup product called ‘Data Guardian’.

As a part of the move, both schools benefited from having their own in-house systems refreshed by Knowledge I.T’s experts, which has resulted in a significant increase in network performance and speed. Also, technical staff from the schools received training and mentoring from the Knowledge I.T team, which has created a dynamic two-way relationship that has delivered huge benefits in terms of system knowledge and communication.

Brendan Tapping, head of St. Wilfrid’s explains: “Our core business is education and that is where our focus will always be. So, we needed to find a local technical supplier who would ensure that our infrastructure was performing and delivering, as it should. Knowledge I.T helped make the transition from our previous supplier painless and they took us through everything step by step which has been a rewarding experience.”

Frank O’Neill, St. Joseph’s head commented: “In addition to the improvement in service, we have also experienced real cost savings in moving to Knowledge I.T. Having a local supplier has also made a big difference to us, for example if we have a problem now, we know that we can have an expert on-site within the hour if necessary, which gives us great peace of mind.”

Knowledge not only provided St. Joseph’s with a transition manager to ensure a smooth changeover from their previous supplier, but also an executive sponsor; Operations Director Kevin McAndrew. Kevin’s role is to be a direct line of contact and escalation point to the school’s headteacher to ensure that all of the school’s unique business requirements were met, as he explains:

“As a part of the Building Schools for the future scheme, the individual schools were all offered a one-size-fits-all technical solution, which whilst working on paper – in reality, it proved to be problematic and restrictive.

“Our tailored ‘One Touch’ Managed Services products are very proactive where we monitor the schools infrastructure 24x7 which allows us to identify any potential problems before they occur, resulting in continued uptime for the schools and no interruption of educational resources for the pupils”.

Knowledge I.T is an ICT Solution provider for business with locations in the North East and Yorkshire specialising in Cloud Computing, Virtualisation and Data Centre Services. www.knowledgeit.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Knowledge I.T .