The Organisation: Fusion Maidstone
We are a healthy living centre offering various health and wellbeing services and social support for Park Wood and across Maidstone. We also run various activities and events for all ages throughout the year, especially around national holidays and celebratory days.
The Challenge: Upgrading Fusion’s IT Infrastructure for Future-Proofing
Qlic have a long-standing relationship with Fusion which began in 2013. At the time Qlic introduced a new on-premise server setup, bringing management of user accounts, devices and organisational data into a central administrable setup.
Fusion’s server was due to fall out of warranty and become end of life in early 2019, therefore an important review was undertaken to determine the future setup of Fusion’s IT network.
Our Approach: Leveraging Office 365 and SharePoint for Enhanced Flexibility
Given the improvements in cloud storage technologies since Fusion’s server was originally installed, Qlic recommended fully utilising the Office 365 suite of services to enable flexible and secure working across the organisation.
SharePoint Online was already included within Fusion’s Microsoft Office 365 charity licensing, so the new cloud storage solution presented itself as a very cost-effective solution. Additionally, it negated the need for remote users to use remote desktop to access the shared data – all this information would now be stored in the cloud and easily accessible.
Finally, the SharePoint migration would be a one-time event and completely replace Fusion’s on-premise server, thereby reducing any ongoing hardware refresh costs to that of user’s devices only.
The Results: Seamless Transition to Cloud Storage with Minimal Disruption
Fusion’s working practices were instantly improved, especially for users working remotely from the main office.
One of the most positive factors of Fusion moving to SharePoint has been the minimal amount of change for staff under the new system. With any new setup, there is a fear that it will look or function differently to the way staff are used to, which can result in frustration and a negative attitude to the new change. Understanding how simple to use and easy to understand SharePoint is has meant staff can continue to work as they were previously, with very minimal training required, safe in the knowledge that the ‘back-end’ of the network just works!
Qlic has taken the pressure off all our IT issues and has made it so much more fun using technology.
Fusion Maidstone
