SaintGroup’s Professional Services team has recently completed two projects at Marie Curie Cancer Care, competently managing risk and demonstrating our commitment to mutual success.

Project 1: Domain Controller Upgrade

This project was the upgrade of Marie Curie Cancer Care’s Active Directory schema and associated operating system of all 27 Domain Controllers across the Marie Curie estate to Windows Server 2008 R2, which was delivered across multiple sites throughout the UK.

The challenge for SaintGroup was to upgrade live systems that are the sole gateway for users onto the network – if these systems are not up and running, users cannot access network resources and key business systems are unavailable.  SaintGroup had to deliver this work out of hours, working to a maximum 12 hour downtime window and required careful planning and coordination with the site contacts, and also regular update meetings with the SaintGroup Change Authority Board to ensure that the project delivery met expected standards.

The additional Group Policy functionality presented by a Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory will deliver real benefits in the ability to administer the desktop environment.  It also prepares the domain for a future Windows 7 upgrade, which Marie Curie may embark upon in the near future.

It is also important to note that despite the project carrying significant risks to not only Marie Curie users but also the Marie Curie Service Desk, no increase in support calls were raised throughout the entire project. This is a massive achievement, and illustrates how we ensure that at all times, the risk to the Service Desk is of paramount importance, and project success relies on this.

Mitel gets personal with a disruptive new multimedia collaboration product - combines revolutionary simplicity with superior HD video and HD audio at an affordable price.

Mitel introduce Mitel UC360™ Collaboration Point, an innovative, first-of-its-kind device for the personal office meeting space. Created in response to customer and market demand for easier, more cost-effective tools to foster collaboration, this all-in-one multimedia collaboration appliance combines multi-party HD video and audio with in-room presentation display and document sharing for remote participants in a single unit at a disruptive price point.

Make collaboration natural
Most collaboration solutions fail to integrate multimedia collaboration into the natural flow of the work day. They don’t enable the kind of spontaneous, anytime collaboration that people need to be their most productive. And they don’t provide the intuitive and fast collaboration that the new workforce increasingly demands.

UC360 overcomes these limitations. A single, sleek and compact product with touch-screen simplicity that is easy to deploy and use, Mitel UC360 changes workplace collaboration from a special, pre-scheduled event into a spontaneous, natural part of every work day. Mitel worked closely with its customer base to design and test the Mitel UC360.

To read more about Mitel UC360 Collaboration, click here  http://www.mitel.com/products/conferencing-and-collaboration/uc360 

At a time when budgets are being stretched to the limit as the financially squeezed population cut back on donations, charities are increasingly looking to work efficiently and ensure IT investments provide value for money. In a bid to cut costs, while improving communications and fundraising, many charities are turning to IT managed services, an approach where the day-to-day IT management responsibilities are outsourced as a strategic method for improving operations.

Using a professional outsourcer enables charities to concentrate on core services, rather than spend time training staff on new technology or solving IT problems. In addition, organisations can be assured IT services are efficiently managed and only the most innovative solutions deployed to reduce costs, improve communications and streamline operations. These are all benefits no charity should overlook.

In fact, many charities are embracing the use of IT managed services to reduce overheads, improve communications and increase fundraising. Given the success these charities are having deploying IT managed services, other Should consider taking a leaf out of their book as they too could realise the same benefits if they follow suit.

To read more from the Charities Management Magazine click  http://www.charitiesmanagement.com/Magazine-No87/sub-bg26r/page-3.html   

SaintGroup is pleased to announce that the initial phase of its deployment of Microsoft's System Centre Operations Manager (SCOM) has now gone live. The initial scope of the project underpins the operational delivery of SaintGroup’s Didsbury, Manchester based Network Operations Centre (NOC). This has therefore kept the focus on migrating the current customer infrastructures, managed by SaintGroup into Systems Centre Operations Manager. 

SCOM is now the primary operational tool being used by SaintGroup. The monitors and rules configured in SCOM are supported by the polling carried out against the customer environments. This allows SCOM to receive both statistical data and alerts of varying breadth and depth. We currently have nearly 300 Management Pack Templates deployed in SCOM; each of these contain the business rules which include the performance counters and measures, monitors, triggers and thresholds that we are monitoring.

This initial scope has been focussed on providing a like for like Capacity and Availability service for the existing customer estates managed. As the data flows into SCOM we are now building a repository of information and our data warehouse now has a range of reports and management information that is available for our Service Delivery team to exploit. Sessions are now being progressed with our SCOM project team in order to further develop the management information we provide to our customers.

To read the Microsoft Case Study on SaintGroup's implementation of SCOM, click on the following link:  http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=710000001429

To read more click here: http://www.SaintGroup.com/resources/item/SaintGroup-selects-microsoft-case-study?category_id=3 

Click here to download the Microsoft Case Study

Click here to download the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Case Study

SaintGroup's usual dress down Friday became a dress up last week as the team tried to out-do each other with their fancy dress costumes to raise money in support of Children in Need.

SaintGroup, which manages many charity organisations' IT services and recently hosted the latest Security Forum event, has matched staff contributions to raise just over £700 for this very worth cause. Well done to everyone that took part in Children in Need, and to SaintGroup's Honey Monster whose peers awarded him best costume.  

Fast and flexible service ensures Business Continuity - click here to download the BDP Case Study