Supporting Ashgate Hospice to improve performance & connectivity

Case Study

Ashgate Hospice enlisted our help to provide them with a technology roadmap

This gave them the foundations to work towards their charitable objectives and long-term future goals. We worked closely with their Head of IT Services, their leadership team and board of trustees to help develop actions that meant their goals were achievable through technology.

Project 1: Improving Performance and System Reliability

Ashgate were looking to improve the performance of their systems and to make them more reliable. These issues often impacted the hospice team, causing frustration and high volumes of calls to service desk.

 

The issue

• Performance issues with their Virtual desktop infrastructure solution, which was hosted on-site, on a single server

• A point of single failure, which could cause downtime and potential data loss

• Caused frustration & resulted in high volumes of calls to the service desk

• Impacted the clinical team’s ability to access SystmOne remotely

Our solution

• A centrally hosted VDI platform which sits on our own UK based data centre infrastructure

• Placed in a cloud environment with enhanced security measures on multiple servers to remove single points of failure

• Reduced Ashgate’s capital expenditure as the solution is paid for on a monthly basis

• Gave them the flexibility to easily scale up and increase the capacity

Key impacts

• A dramatic decrease in the number of overall tickets raised to the service desk, with a drop of almost 60%, and a reduction of VDI specific tickets up to 90

• Freed up valuable time and resource costs, allowing the IT team to focus on being proactive

• The new platform is much quicker, and faster access enables them to work more efficiently

Project 2: Resilient Connectivity

The Issue

• Needed 100% uptime to ensure that they would never have any downtime, as losing internet connectivity for any length of time can impact on a patients care

• Only had only had one leased line serving the hospice, meaning should that line be damaged, the internet would go down until it was repaired

Our Solution

• We provided a diverse leased line solution, which included two internet connections to their main site with automatic failover to the secondary connection should the primary fail

• The new leased lines also provide the capability to increase 10x the speed they are currently

Key Impacts

• The connectivity solution also included CT Protect, a cloud based web filtering solution which ensures users are unable to access inappropriate content or unsafe websites that may contain malware or ransomware

• Gave Ashgate Hospice the peace of mind that they have the back-up they need to continue the important 24/7 work they provide

Client
review

“They continue to deliver high levels of customer service at all times and we are confident that should any problems arise they are addressed swiftly and effectively. We are looking forward to continuing our strong relationship with CT into the future..”

Andy Croydon, Head of IT Services at Ashgate Hospice

Ashgate Hospice