ALS Civil Engineers
THE ORGANISATION
ALS Civil & Mechanical Engineers are based in Kent and are a utility services provider that undertakes the civil engineering and installation of underground services for the provision of Clean and Waste Water Mains, Gas Mains, Electric Cables, Telecoms Cables and much more.
THE CHALLENGE
ALS Civil Engineers were struggling with their local network being slow as they were using a Synology network storage device, which is intended for less users than ALS has. This caused a massive strain by causing slow loading times and crashing documents, if this carried on it could have eventually led to data loss and corruption.
Furthermore, the remote access setup with their Synology network prevents them from receiving a secure remote access to the local network.
Also, in terms of ALS’ backup system, they never received reports on whether the backups were a success or a failure as the restore function was never tested. In addition, the portable device did not have any encryption giving concerns around data leakage.
ALS used an email solution supplied by a mixture of AOL and NamesCo, both of these solutions are gradually being phased out of the industry and also have many flaws, such as no centralised email backup, security or ability to share mailboxes or folders.
ALS has grown significantly over the past 12 months and needed an improvement on their existing legacy Sage Job Costing software.
OUR APPROACH
Qlic advised migrating over to SharePoint Online. This allows users to easily share and manage their files, folders and any content from a device which is connected to the internet to empower teamwork, seamless collaboration, and quick search for information.
We also advised migrating their current email solution to Microsoft Office 365, this provides 99.9% uptime guarantee for email, as well as enhanced features such as shared contacts and calendars. As well as this, Office 365 email allows secure email access via any additional devices that the users may use.
Qlic proposed moving ALS over from Sage Job Costing software to Eque2, this will be a cloud-based server dedicated to Sage and provides an additional layer of protection and data retention. In the event of a data corruption or deletion the files would be rolled back for up to 90 days.
All Windows 7 desktops were to be replaced or upgraded to be in-line with the SharePoint migration to allow for fast and most effective use of the Office 365 environment
THE RESULTS
One of the main benefits that ALS immediately realised was the migration over to Office 365 and SharePoint Online not only improved their security and user access policies but also enabled more flexible remote working and staff members can now access their files in areas of limited connectivity and when ‘on the go’. This optimised their business continuity and efficiency.
The implementing of Sage/Eq2 added an additional layer of protection and data retention which ALS were very keen to have and meant that in the event of any data corruption or deletion the files would be rolled back for up to 90 days.
ALS also had the added peace of mind as our service desk was on-hand with fast responses and fixed issues in the event of any problems with their devices or IT infrastructure.
