Bristol IT Company merged with MDS Technologies to become Assured Digital Technologies in April 2020.

Background

Colston Hall is Bristol’s largest concert hall, presenting concerts and entertainment by major names in rock, pop, jazz, folk, world and classical music, stand up comedy and light entertainment, as well as local choirs, orchestras and schools. Audiences have been enjoying music there since 1867 and the building remains at the heart of cultural life in the city.

Challenge

Colston Hall staff work from multiple locations, but all need to be able to access the same data. This includes financial packages, ticketing systems as well as usual business operations. They were also after a solution that didn’t require capital investment while meeting their budget constraints.

Solution

Bristol IT Company were able to come up with a bespoke solution that met Colston Hall’s requirements whilst also coming in under budget. The solution is made up of highly availability servers that are connected to super fast solid-state storage via 10 Gigabit networking. This means that the time users spend waiting for operations is minimal, enabling a boost in productivity. All portions of the solution are redundant, meaning that if a piece of hardware fails, there is another system waiting to take over. This helps them with their mission critical work around live performances, ensuring that there are no financial losses from downtime. As well as providing the hardware and software that power the solution, Bristol IT Company are also in charge of maintenance – this means that there is a strict patching regime that ensures that all software is up to date, and complies with Colston Hall’s Cyber Essentials certification. User logins to the remote system are protected by two-factor authentication, which ensures that only legitimate users are able to access company data.

Results

Colston Hall are able to work from any location in the world, while maintaining a uniform experience that mimics being sat in the building itself. This allows staff flexibility in their working environment, while also providing significant business continuity benefits. By containing all data in one single location, the chance of data being exfiltrated is lessened – providing significant protection against corporate espionage and malicious users. Because client machines act as thin-clients, Colston Hall were able to purchase much cheaper end user machines – therefore saving considerable upfront cost when replacing machines.