Sussex Multi-site IT Support Case Study: South Coast Nursing Homes

Multi-site IT support made simple: How AJT delivered a 10-site upgrade in just 90 minutes

Managing IT across multiple locations can be challenging for growing businesses. Here’s how we helped a leading care provider upgrade security across 10 sites with minimal downtime.

The team at AJT made the whole task of upgrading all of our 10 sites simultaneously a seamless experience with very limited downtime. It can be easy to put off major projects like these due to the perceived threat of downtime, disruption and loss of productivity. AJT took us through the plan and reassured us they could get us back up and running quickly and smoothly and they definitely delivered.

Alex Scott, South Coast Nursing Homes

South Coast Nursing Homes (SCNH) offers residential, nursing and dementia care for over 400 residents across Sussex and employs over 600 people.

As part of a phased multi-site IT support standardisation project, AJT identified the opportunity to upgrade SCNH’s cyber security infrastructure to better protect the business and its customers.

Like many multi-site businesses, SCNH needed to upgrade its IT infrastructure without disrupting day-to-day operations. The upgrades were across 10 Sussex sites, from Littlehampton to Seaford. Each upgrade needed to be coordinated as efficiently as possible to ensure downtime was kept to an absolute minimum.

At the same time, we needed to ensure the SCNH team – and all our other customers – had uninterrupted access to business-as-usual (BAU) support. Any everyday IT support tickets raised during the upgrade still needed to be responded to and resolved as efficiently as always.

SCNH needed an upgrade from outdated firewall hardware to modern Universal Threat Management (UTM) devices that provide comprehensive security.

As SonicWall partners, we were able to offer SCNH access to the latest generation UTM hardware at around 40% discount from RRP, with 3 years of cover included.

All the new Gen 8 devices were pre-configured in the AJT offices so that all the team had to do onsite was swap the physical hardware as quickly as possible.

Once the new hardware was in place, SCNH could be brought back online exactly the same as before, but with much better protection.

The 4 most senior AJT team members divided the onsite deployments among themselves, each taking responsibility for the installations nearby. This ensured the multi-site project could be completed in minutes rather than days.

At the same time, all other members of the AJT team provided normal helpdesk support to SCNH staff and all other customers.

All SCNH’s 10 sites across Sussex, including Littlehampton, Worthing, Burgess Hill, and Seaford, are now protected by the latest Generation 8 SonicWall UTM devices. This means SCNH now has enterprise-grade protection against cyber threats, safeguarding sensitive data and ensuring compliance.

The AJT team completed the onsite upgrades across 10 locations in less than 90 minutes, and restricted downtime to only a few minutes per site. This means minimal downtime and disruption to the care homes’ staff, customers and visitors.

BAU IT support remained consistent and responsive for SCNH employees, as well as AJT’s other IT support customers.\

This security upgrade is part of a phased approach to standardise IT across SCNH’s multiple sites to reduce the number of connectivity support requests from staff who work at different sites.

For the next phase, the AJT team will adjust the networks and Wi-Fi to create a consistent corporate experience at each site. The aim is to ensure all staff can connect and work efficiently, no matter which site they work from.