CASE STUDIES SOUTH RIBBLE

SystemCare helps South Ribble keep critical servers operational

The borough of South Ribble was created in 1974 and at the last census had over 100,000 residents. Headquartered in Leyland, Lancashire the Borough Council employs nearly 400 people to enable it to deliver services to its citizens.

Tailored support package

The Council runs its entire IT infrastructure on more than 50 servers. These support all the applications used by the 250+ users in their day-to-day jobs. Naturally, the wellbeing of these servers is important to the efficient functioning of the Council and as a result they decided to take out a SystemCare agreement with Nviron to ensure that downtime was kept to a minimum.

The flexible nature of the SystemCare agreement enabled the Council to choose the modules that best suited their needs and tailor a package that provides real value for money.

John Healey, ICT Manager at the Council explained, "The agreement means that every quarter an Nviron consultant visits our premises and thoroughly checks the servers we have nominated. Although we have a number of critical ones that are checked every quarter, this flexible approach enables us to get all our servers regularly checked on a rolling basis."

Such proactive tasks are vital in ensuring that the Council's servers are kept operational at all times and do not limit its ability to deliver essential services.

Specialist help

As well as quarterly visits, the SystemCare agreement also gives the Council a number of directed days. These can be called off, when required, to deal with specific tasks that require specialist expertise and knowledge. This is a very cost effective way of obtaining high level skills without the need to employ them full time in-house and has helped the Council out on a number of occasions.

John Healey concluded:

"We have been delighted with the flexible level of support that the SystemCare agreement has given us over the years. It enables us to get on with the day-to-day tasks of running the IT department safe in the knowledge that we can call on Nviron' specialists when required.

As well as the specialist support we have also found the general advice and guidance that the Nviron staff have given us to be invaluable as well. By working in close partnership with them we will always have the ideal resource levels to meet all our needs."