Here at Lanesystems we manage a large accountancy firm consisting of 5 sites spread across the North East. The practice uses specialist, industry appropriate applications such as Sage line 50 / IRIS / Digita / Sage Payroll. Having approached Lanesystems in 2014 to assist in the re-design of infrastructure, we were tasked to facilitate the following:

• Redundancy
• Resilience
• Global security
• Site to site roaming

In this instance many of our competitors recommended using a Cloud Based platform to provide a centralised system to operate from. Unfortunately, the use of a central server which accommodates all users comes with its own risks:

• Broadband outage
• Remote application support by Key software suppliers
• Cost

For this accountancy firm, running a business consisting of 50 + employees dependent on one point of failure (Broadband) was simply not an option. Whilst there are many other solutions available including a lease line and dedicated circuit as an alternative carrier for the broadband, the SLA times are 1-4 hours to investigate but resolution can be significantly more.

Cost is an important consideration. Every business has to be sustainable and therefore understanding the costs associated with IT solutions over the years is crucial. Lanesystems constructed a strategic plan (vital for businesses of this size), based on a 3 year ownership to allow accurate budget forecasting. The plan focussed around Hybrid architecture utilising a cloud environment and in-house servers. This type of architecture allows users to continue using various applications in the event of a Broadband failure.

For this company we provided a fully managed environment from PC hardware to the support and liaison of other software manufacturers. As a company, we don’t believe in passing ownership of a problem but resolving it with minimal intervention of the users.