Oasis Community Housing are a housing and homelessness charity based in the North East but with projects nationwide, with 30 years’ and nearly 100 staff with experience of delivering bespoke, effective services for vulnerably housed and homeless people.
The management team were looking at ways to improve their communications and streamline costs, after drawing a shortlist of leading national technology companies Smart IT were appointed to migrate the current IT infrastructure from Oasis IT to be completely managed and supported by Smart IT.
Having outgrown their previous provider, they were keen to work with a company with the resource and work ethic matching their own.
“Having worked with a smaller outfit for 3 years, we recognised that they were no longer able to respond to our requests in a timely fashion. This was having a negative impact on our productivity and the services which we offer.”
Nancy Doyle, Chief Executive
Another consideration was that a large part of their IT infrastructure was nearing end of life. It was important to Oasis Aquila that the chosen supplier had the correct experience and offered the best value.
Any chosen solution needed to be future-proofed and flexible enough to see the organisation through at least the next 5 years.
IT Support
Smart IT provided Oasis Aquila with a fully outsourced IT department for all offices nationwide including unlimited remote and onsite IT support within minutes of calling our office, 93% of Oasis Aquila IT problems are now resolved remotely, all included as part of their monthly maintenance fee.
Previously, the lack of response to IT issues had meant staff had waited days to get problems resolved. Our IT support service has cleared up the back log of IT problems Oasis Aquila was suffering from. Pro-active monitoring and preventative maintenance is an important part of the service and has ensured Oasis Aquila IT systems run smoothly and employee efficiency is kept high.
Oasis Aquila employees have the confidence that whatever the IT problem, Smart IT will be able to assist and resolve their issues fast. Oasis Aquila have been using Smart IT’s outsourced IT department now for over 18 months now, and are also discussing moving all telecoms services (lines, calls and internet), print services and website development to Smart IT for an improved level of service.
Server
Oasis Aquila previously relied on 2 physical servers. An outdated version of Microsoft Small Business Server and a Terminal Server offering remote access to the projects. Both servers were inadequate to support what is a rapidly growing organisation.
Using the latest virtualisation technologies Smart IT implemented a single server solution collaborating all they had before on one single physical machine running two virtual servers. 85 email accounts were migrated to Office 365 to reduce the load internally and take advantage of the reduced charity pricing available from Microsoft.
The new server has been a great success providing employees with more streamlined and reliable IT setup that is monitored remotely by Smart IT engineers.
Office 365
Oasis Community Housing chose to take advantage of the charity licenses available from Microsoft free of charge to charities, and use the portal to host all their email, calendars, contacts, cloud files as well as providing the latest in communication technology to their users, using Skype for Business. Smart IT fully configured the Office 365 portal and migrated 85 mailboxes to the Office 365 platform.
Benefits
Faster internet using fibre connectivity and updating networking hardware
More secure with all remote devices being encrypted
Timely IT support service incorporating reactive and proactive support tools
Improved productivity for all members of staff
A more reliable IT solution using the latest Microsoft software and Hewlett Packard server hardware
Reduced cost of ownership through a reduction in the number of physical servers
Remote backup providing peace of mind that all data is securely held offsite
For information how Smart IT can help with your IT Systems contact us today.
