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The Lowdown – Site Expansion and Business Premium (Charity)

The Lowdown is a Mental Health Charity, providing free and confidential support services for 11- 25 year olds in Northamptonshire. Working as part of The REACH Collaborative.

Challenges

The customer had one a massive grant to expand and update their buildings. As part of this, they needed a network upgrade and Wi-Fi upgrade. The project was to be a long term one (12 months or more) due to the Grade listing of their building, and co-ordinating the various parties involved.

The customer also wanted at the time, better data protection, control and management of their IT systems.

Solution

We attended site and the meetings, liaised with all the parties, quoted the needed parts for our part of the project.

We quoted a new POE network switch, 8x new Unifi Access points and 1x external weather proof Unifi Access point.

Also we demonstrated and quoted an upgrade to their Office 365 for additional security, management, data loss prevention and other options. All utilising Office 365 Business Premium Licenses for charity.

Implementation/Process

Part of the whole project meant that the customer had to move out of their site (for the building works to take place), and into 2 other sites, splitting the staff up. Therefore data security and integral communications were needed. Part one of the project focused on getting them upgraded to Business Premium, the machines setup and AzureAD joined and everything made secure to the customer’s needs.

Part 2 of the project was to aid the building management in the network configuration and setup, the access points and switch install and getting the customer moved back in when he building was ready for occupation.

We completed the final stages of the project late 2024.

Results/Benefits

The customer has a more integrated and secure computer system with all the benefits of Office 365 business Premium.

They have a modern site that has better networking infrastructure, with POE available everywhere, and Wi-Fi flooding the whole site with a good signal.

The customer took advantage of the Charity pricing of the Office 365 system – that allows them to have 10x free Business Premium licenses and unlimited Business Basic licenses.

Key Takeaways

  • Charity pricing for Office 365 system allows 10x free Business Premium and unlimited Business Basic licenses.
  • We managed the whole IT side of the project for the customer, liaising with 3rd parties where needed.
  • More security and better IT management for the customer for only a marginal increase in costs.

For more information about our services, please call us today on 01604 790979