Microbyte are pleased to announce that they have been selected by local historical landmark, Burghley House to modernise their current infrastructure.
After a recommendation from Stamford based design consultants D-Squared, we have begun the long journey to bring the 16th century country house into the 21st century. The existing system was disjointed; relying fully on local servers and hardware -this presents a potential risk from a security aspect.
“Burghley is pleased to be working with Microbyte to enhance and modernise our network bringing 21st century connectivity to a grade one star listed building and visitor attraction with all the complexities that involves. The support and expertise of the engineers and project managers has been second to none and we look forward to continuing to work with them for the foreseeable future.” Jo Tinker, Marketing Manager at Burghley House.
They are not alone in this, many businesses across every sector have decided to reserve cash due to the slow economy is recent years and attempting to get the most out of their current servers. However, the truth is that when you are operating solely with a local server, you run the risk of losing everything should the server become damaged.
A move to the cloud holds many advantages, especially for those businesses that want to optimise their current IT performance. Along with the team at Burghley House we decided that for them, a move to Microsoft Office 365 along with a Remote Desktop Services for a Hybrid Cloud and Thin Client Based Configuration was the most suitable option.
Despite a recent Government push, a little known fact is that many businesses across the country are unable to gain access to the dedicated broadband service that they need. Burghley House was one of these businesses; their current data service was simply not sufficient, resulting in slow broadband speeds when working online, poor WiFi, painfully slow transactions all leading to frustrated staff and customers. We assisted Burghley House in being able to have access to a dedicated leased line; a service that offers a 1-1 contention ratio, meaning a faster, reliable service.
Due to the age and the status of the building, it was critical that thorough risk assessments and method statements were prepared to ensure the integrity of the building wasn’t compromised in any way. This is always good practice as it means we as a business are always revising our own working practices and policies.
“Working with Burghley House has been a challenging and exciting adventure. We have been collaborating with Jo and the team to plan upgrades such as a Leased Line installation, Charity Office 365 and a complete migration to Remote Desktop. We have also been involved in some physical networking which has raised the classic issue of functionality vs. aesthetics. However, the whole Burghley team has been patient, flexible and, most of all, interested in helping us to reach the goals set out. I look forward to building a great partnership in the future.” Lewis Livingstone, IT Development & Project Manager
We were already aware that the legacy equipment and old software could present themselves as problematic throughout the project. In order to investigate any further the barriers that we may encounter, several site surveys were carried out by the engineering team at Microbyte.
This also enabled us to identify the timelines that could be expected, once these site surveys were completed we could provide our clients with the project breakdown and the milestones that would be achieved. As both businesses had established excellent lines of communication, everyone involved was aware that there was a degree of flexibility required throughout the project due to the nature of the business and the events that are held on the grounds. The project is expected to take several months as the building needs to be cabled, a move to Office 365, upgrade the existing local server and back up implementation.
The end result will see Burghley House home to a completely integrated digital infrastructure that includes an easily supportable platform that is accessible globally for users. The new network will allow them to provide an increased level of customer service, vastly improved broadband facilities across the entire site and a much better technology provision for the prestigious events such as the Burghley Horse Trials.
This is a complex and important project, and we are confident that the impact a modernised infrastructure will have will be felt by all the people that take awe and inspiration from Burghley House.