Background
Bristol Music Trust is an independent organisation and registered charity created to develop Colston Hall’s artistic programme and promote music and music making in Bristol. Assured Digital Technologies (ADT) has been supporting BMT for years, previously helping to enable unified working through Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Challenge
Bristol Music Trust (BMT) have been running a bespoke hosted remote desktop solution since 2013, whilst this solution met their requirements at the time, changes to their business meant they required more flexibility and simplicity for BMT staff to work efficiently from anywhere, regardless of connectivity issues. As a registered charity, Bristol Music Trust required the solution to be more cost effective than their current bespoke solution.
Solution
Having been an IT support provider for Bristol Music Trust for many years, we were able to use this knowledge of the customer, combined with their project management and implementation skills to carry out the most effective digital transformation for BMT. The solution included the implementation of:
- Microsoft 365 Enterprise Subscription: Combining the productivity tools and features of Office 365 with the security of Windows 10, this upgrade included:
- Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive for company data management.
- Drive Mapping Software to provide easy access to SharePoint data as a standard network drive.
- Microsoft Azure Active Directory for centralised cloud authentication.
- Microsoft Intune for device management across laptops, desktops, and mobile devices, allowing centralised deployment of software applications and policies.
- Microsoft Teams for unified communications, facilitating collaboration among BMT staff and with external partners.
- High-Availability Web Hosting: Using Amazon Web Services (AWS), we ensured that all Bristol Music Trust websites remain online and operate at optimal levels.
- Onsite Virtualisation Host: For software that needed to run on-premise, we implemented a host fully integrated with Microsoft 365, with offsite backup and replication for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.
This digital transformation enables BMT to future-proof their operations and empowers their staff to work efficiently and flexibly from any location and device. To keep costs low, Assured Digital Technologies leveraged supplier charity discounts, ensuring a cost-effective solution for Bristol Music Trust.
Result
Thanks to the technical expertise and implementation experience of Assured Digital Technologies, Bristol Music Trust successfully transitioned to their new solution with minimal downtime. Leveraging various charity discounts from Microsoft and Amazon enabled ADT to deliver flexible working solutions at an affordable price. As a result, the Colston Hall Education Team is now able to offer virtual music lessons via Microsoft Teams, a capability that was not possible before, especially crucial during the current pandemic.
“We were very pleased with the efficient and professional way in which BIT transitioned the whole company very smoothly over to the new system. It enables much better team working for our staff and is a robust and effective IT solution. Having an up to date business IT solution has enabled us to facilitate home-working across the business as necessary, and deal with the current lockdown situation in a way which just would not have been possible before.”
Clare Jack, Chief Operating Officer
