Professional IT Services Case Study

The Customer - Was founded in 1988, as a specialist retail practice of chartered surveyors, located in St Ann's Square, in the heart of Manchester's retailing area and on Castle Street in the centre of Liverpool, and is now recognised as one of the leading shopping centre advisors in the UK. Working in conjunction with leasing teams, the firm provides a co-ordinated strategy on both rent review and lease renewals to ensure a seamless asset management role. In addition the practice provides advice on development, shopping centre extension and investment on a diverse range of centres.

The client has an experienced and specialist team of Chartered Surveyors dealing with all professional matters for both landlords and tenants with an emphasis on lease renewals, rent reviews, arbitrations, valuations and related matters. The client have consultants with a detailed understanding of case law and extensive market knowledge which enables them to draw on rental evidence gained from negotiations in the high street, shopping centres and retail warehouse parks, to achieve the best possible results on behalf of its clients The customer have provided development advice on both extensions to existing shopping centres and new developments, and the practice provides advice on the design, leasing, funding and sale of leisure schemes throughout the country, such as Great Northern, Manchester on behalf of AWG/X-Leisure, which comprises 500,000 sq ft of retail and leisure space including a 16-screen AMC Cinema. Other projects include a new 150,000 sq ft boutique hotel and bar/restaurant scheme in the heart of Sheffield city centre on behalf of ASK Developments.

The Challenge – The Customer has over the last few years seen a large growth in its market share which has placed even more importance on the computer systems used. As with lots of business that go through a period of growth it becomes even more important to have the right type of partner who can support these systems. Keytech has worked closely with client since January 2007 with the aim to both improve the systems that are being using and the reliability and support of these systems going forward. The Initial problems encountered by the Keytech Team were:

• Server and PC reliability
• Location of Critical Devices
• Ongoing support

The Solution - Server and Desktop Refresh - Keytech carried a refresh of the Server and desktop estate using branded computers to replace the existing self built (clone) machines and installed remote control for every PC. This enables any users PC to be accessed when required remotely by the Keytech help desk team, to help diagnose and repair user problems remotely

Server Room Refresh -Keytech also recommended a tidy up of the server location, which included a new half height rack and tidy up and re-patching of the data cabling infrastructure.

External Comms – Internet line -Keytech recommended and sourced suitable partners to provide an SDSL connection to cope with additional Internet bandwidth requirements.

Services - Keytech deployed the followed mix of services to compliment the infrastructure upgrades that had been completed

• Managed Server
• Databank Network
• Managed Firewall & Web Filtering
• Hosted E-mail including mail sweeping
• E-mail archiving
• Managed Blackberry
• Help Desk

Managed Server – Keytech deployed a management gateway on site that monitors the infrastructures key components such as servers and network devices and reports on the key components of these systems. This is a 24x7x365 fully managed service that enables Keytech to proactively monitor and manage these devices to provide optimum performance and uptime.

Databank Network – This backup service provides and on site disk to disk backup solution of the primary IT systems and a secondary backup systems that takes critical data off site through the Internet and onto a second backup system at the Keytech Hosting centre.

Managed Firewall and Web Filtering - A best of breed checkpoint Firewall was deployed which includes integrated web filtering. During the project take on a set of policies were agreed that enabled Keytech to configure web site access to sites that are trusted by the client. This service is fully managed 24x7x365, and ensures that the perimeter protection is always monitored and updated with the latest threat definitions.

Hosted E-mail and mail sweeping – all mail services for the client are hosted on a state of the art Exchange Cluster in Keytech’s secure hosting centre. This gives the customer the peace of mind that E-mail is available 24x7. Every mail incoming and outgoing is scanned for virus and spam to ensure that these threats are stopped at the perimeter.

E-mail Archiving – All users E-mails are archived to an agreed policy to suit the business. This happens automatically at the Keytech Hosting centre and helps reduce the size of users mailboxes making the users mail system more manageable and recoverable.

Managed Blackberry – All Blackberry users were migrated to the offsite blackberry service provided by Keytech. This enabled a further reduction in the number of servers based at the Manchester office. This is a fully managed service provided by Keytech who take full ownership of the customers Blackberry service.

Help Desk - This is a mix of application and software support for users and their PC’s, and is aided by having remote access to user machines. Keytech installed remote support tools onto each user’s PC that enables any user problems to be reviewed remotely by the service desk team.