Copeland Borough Council
Copeland Borough Council is the governing council responsible for the western Cumbria borough of Copeland.
Copeland Borough Council is the governing council responsible for the western Cumbria borough of Copeland.
As councillors’ demanded greater flexibility in their choice of devices, it became clear that the Council’s aging VPN infrastructure was holding it back. With the help of Phoenix Software, Copeland Borough Council was able to deploy Office 365 to meet the demands of its users, while also providing the foundation for significant innovations in the future.
As has become commonplace in organisations across the private and public sector, users increasingly want – and expect – to use the very latest technologies at work. Whereas barely a decade ago users would have been content with the device they were given by IT – because that was the only device approved and configured to work on the network – today they want to use the same devices at work that they use at home, and they don’t want to be limited to one device. They want the iPad experience, but they want IT to support and manage it.
For Copeland Borough Council, this was a demand he was facing every day, when the borough’s 52 elected Councillors would ask for greater flexibility in the devices they could use so they could be more productive and work more easily from different locations.
The Council wanted to provide its Councillors with the flexibility they wanted, but it’s existing VPN-based IT infrastructure rendered such demands impossible to meet. Each of the Councillors were already provided with a laptop with a Juniper SSL-VPN client. While this enabled them to work remotely if they wished, they were limited to using the one device provided by IT, and any change or new device needed significant work from IT before it could be used. This was a far cry from the iPad style experience they craved.
At the same time, the Council’s IT Team was facing pressures of its own, least of all a shrinking IT budget in the age of austerity. The small team also spent most of its time just managing the existing IT infrastructure. How could they find the time or the budget to provide the flexibility his users were demanding? They needed a solution that not only freed their users to use the devices they wanted to, but did so without increasing the burden of management on the team or costing an arm and a leg. And last but not least, the new solution had to be compliant with all of the regulations that UK Council’s must abide by, such as IL2 classification for personal data protection and PSN classification.
Phoenix Software was very professional throughout the project. Not only were they able to show us a solution that more than met our needs, but their professional services team went above and beyond to ensure we got the very best out of the software when it came to the actual deployment.
The Council looked into a number of potential solutions to solve its challenges, including Google Apps and a Citrix/XenMobile virtual desktop (VDI) solution. While Google Apps was a relatively low cost option, it was quickly dismissed due to data security concerns, limited functionality, unfamiliarity to users and its lack of compliance with PSN. All of these factors meant it could never be used as a complete replacement to the existing solution. The Citrix/XenDesktop solution would meet the Council’s requirements for greater flexibility and PSN compliance, but its management complexity and prohibitively high cost rendered it unsuitable. Ultimately none of the solutions that the Council had seen could solve all of the challenges it had.
Phoenix Software already supplied Copeland Borough Council with its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement for the bulk of its Microsoft software, including Windows and Office. Through this relationship it was able to gain a deep understanding of the challenges it was facing and to propose an alternative solution which could meet all of the Council’s objectives without any significant changes to the software the Councillors were already using. Phoenix Software proposed to deploy Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based Office, email and storage solution. Office 365 would provide each Councillor with a cloud-based Exchange mailbox and calendar which could be accessed from any device, in addition to the latest versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access, Publisher, Outlook, Skype for Business and InfoPath, as well as web applications of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. What’s more, each user could install Office on up to five different devices, and with native Office apps for PC, Android, iPhone, iPad and even Mac, the Councillors could finally enjoy the device freedom they had craved.
Due to the immediate success and popularity of Office 365 among the 52 elected councillors, Copeland Borough Council quickly expanded its use of Office 365 to a further 325 users within the wider Council. This enabled the Council to retire two of its three onsite Exchange servers, leaving just one hybrid Exchange server. Phoenix Software managed the entire project on the Council’s behalf in just 15 days. This included the migration of all user data and emails to the Office 365 cloud and the changes to the onsite server environment.
“Phoenix Software was very professional throughout the project. Not only were they able to show us a solution that more than met our needs, but their professional services team went above and beyond to ensure we got the very best out of the software when it came to the actual deployment,” Copeland Borough Council.
While Office 365 was able to meet the Council’s initial requirements for greater device flexibility and reduced management overheads, it also provided numerous additional features which no other single solution could hope to match:
Phoenix has opened the door to a wealth of new services and experiences that are innovating every aspect of the Council. Without Phoenix Software’s help we would not be as far forward as we are now. They not only ensured we got the very best out of Office 365, but that we could use Office 365 as the platform upon which to bring the Council’s operations firmly into the 21st century
The benefits to the Council as a whole and the IT Team in particular since switching to Office 365 were immediate and numerous:
Due to the success of Office 365 the Council is already investigating additional Microsoft services and devices which could complement and improve its use of Office 365. This includes an ongoing trial of Microsoft Surface Pro tablets for a more seamless mobile experience, investigating enterprise voice services that integrate external voice calls (via SIP) with Skype for Business, and exploring the Microsoft Azure AD Premium cloud platform in order to securely deploy web-based apps directly to Council users.
“Phoenix has opened the door to a wealth of new services and experiences that are innovating every aspect of the Council. Without Phoenix Software’s help we would not be as far forward as we are now. They not only ensured we got the very best out of Office 365, but that we could use Office 365 as the platform upon which to bring the Council’s operations firmly into the 21st century,” Copeland Borough Council.