MPCA were looking to make their staff’s working environment more efficient as they work across two main offices and also have multiple remote workers.
The Company
Muntz and Partners Chartered Accountants (MPCA) is an accounting practice established in 1997 specialising in the small and medium enterprise market
Austin Technology has been our trusted IT Partner since 2013, they look after all the maintenance of our computer systems, including our servers, stand-alone PC’s, offsite back up’s in addition to all our hardware procurement needs. In August 2015 as part of our long term IT strategy they deployed a new Remote Desktop Services environment into the business that has vastly improved the productivity of our hard working staff.
They acknowledge all our requests for support and complete tasks in a speedy manner. Their support staff are easy to talk to and take all our requests seriously and fit in with our work requirements.I am happy to recommend them for your IT servicing and hardware needs.
Domenic Fulco – Practice Manager / Muntz & Partners
The Challenge
MPCA were looking to make their staff’s working environment more efficient as they work across two main offices and also have multiple remote workers. With over a Terabyte of data and a drive towards a paperless office was taking its toll on their 8 year old Windows 2008 SBS server. How to keep all that data backed up and easily recoverable if the worst was to happen.
Solution
A full remote desktop solution (RDS) also referred to as a terminal server was put in place with new server hardware. The RDS runs all of the company’s applications, including Exchange, Office, HandiSoft and many more business applications. RDS was chosen as it gives a standard working environment for all staff no matter where they are working from, all they need is an internet connection.
Cloud server was considered as MPCA have a 10Mbps fibre connection, however through discussions with the partners the business preferred a Capex type of solution as that fitted better with their own business model. The fibre connection was leveraged to provide MPCA with a full offsite disaster recovery solution within Austin Technology’s own Cloud as part of their business continuity plan.
Process
The RDS server was built using Microsoft Windows 2012R2 and utilised the Hyper-V component to provide the virtual server instances needed for the RDS, Domain Controller and Microsoft Exchange. Significant time was invested by the technical teams to test the many line of business applications worked properly. This was achieved by publishing a RemoteApp on the RDS and this was presented to the end user on their own desktop as if it was installed locally, thus enabling us to thoroughly test each application. The new server ran concurrently with the old unit during this process, enabling the migration to be completed with no down time for end users.
Result
- All staff have the same working environment and can work from anywhere as long as they have access to the internet.
- All data including production servers are backed up in to the cloud and can be restored into the same cloud or on premise if disaster were to strike
- There was no downtime – all staff continued to do their job during the install and setup of the new server.
- Project was delivered on time and on budget
