Reference story - Hazlewoods
Hazlewoods is an independent top 40 firm of Business Advisers and Chartered Accountants operating throughout the UK. The Firm prides itself in providing the greatest level of professionalism in all areas of Business Advice, Accountancy, Tax, Corporate Finance and Financial Planning. It has genuine in house specialists with industry sector experience in areas such as healthcare, legal, vets and agriculture.
Hazlewoods employs over 210 staff in three different offices in Staverton, Gloucester and Cheltenham. The IT staff based in Staverton faced the challenge of centralizing all their applications for office based users and also allowing local application access for users when offsite eg: auditors. Therefore, when Hazlewoods implemented its new IT infrastructure it chose a Citrix Presentation Server farm, connecting all users back to Staverton.
The Challenge
IT Staff at Hazlewood’s faced a number of issues managing off site users and users at two remote offices. It was difficult to control application access and members of the IT team found they were routinely spending a large amount of time maintaining individual desktops and controlling the security of the network.
Tim Adams, IT Technician described the situation prior to the installation of RES Software, “We had a problem controlling who had access to what application and a heavy workload was created by routine issues and maintenance. RES Software allows us to control access to applications and roll out software more quickly. RES PowerFuse makes the set up of user environments easier especially when maintaining three separate locations”
The Solution
RES Software was recommended to Hazlewoods by PTLGateway, a reseller of RES Software. The company decided to adopt the products once they had seen a product demonstration and realised how well the flexible solutions fitted in with their business model. The management of desktops has been made easier with the combination of RES PowerFuse and RES Wisdom. The job of the IT department has been simplified by rolling out RES PowerFuse. Deploying this solution has made the set up and maintenance of the user environment much easier. The user workspace is now better protected from unauthorised software and there is much greater control of security across the organization.
“RES Software has had a tremendous impact on our organisation. IT resources are now no longer spent on routine tasks such as software roll outs as essential applications can be rolled out quickly and simply. We also now have greater control of individual desktops and much tighter control of security.”
RES PowerFuse ensures the Citrix server’s run all applications efficiently. From a single console, Hazelwoods can now maintain its entire IT infrastructure and avoid time consuming repetitive manual installations. RES Wisdom allows software upgrades/ installations from a centralized console to any workstation, by a few simple steps.
The Benefits
Hazlewoods was soon able to realise the benefits of implementing RES PowerFuse and RES Wisdom. Rollouts of new software and applications can now be done across 210 computers at once, rather than individually, dramatically reducing the amount of time spent on routine maintenance. Hazlewoods now have much greater scope to lock down access to applications and data. Stuart Ayers, IT Technician, concludes “RES Software has had a tremendous impact on our organisation. IT resources are now no longer spent on routine tasks such as software roll outs as essential applications can be rolled out quickly and simply. We also now have greater control of individual desktops and much tighter control of security”.
The Future
The benefits of RES Software solutions have been so great that Hazlewoods plan to continue its roll out across all new servers and laptops. The company also has plans to upgrade in 2008 to the latest version of RES PowerFuse; RES PowerFuse 2008 Enterprise Edition. In addition, RES Software will allow Hazlewoods to remain at the forefront of accountancy packages. The company can now upgrade to the latest developments across all servers/ workstations with minimum disruption to the working day.
RES Software has had a tremendous impact on our organisation. IT resources are no longer spent on routne tasks such as software roll outs. We also have greater control of individual desktops and much tighter control of security.
Tim Adams, Stuart Ayers, IT Technician, UK