Salisbury Cathedral

Microsoft Cloud to support mobile working and accelerate growth

Iconic Salisbury Cathedral invests in Microsoft Cloud to support mobile working and accelerate growth

Salisbury Cathedral is one of England’s finest medieval cathedrals – attracting over 500,000 visitors each year.

Salisbury Cathedral receives no subsidies, charges no entrance fees, and has to be entirely self-sufficient through visitor donations and the support of a 600-strong volunteer group. Yet it is also required to operate to the same standards and regulations as private and public sector organisations.

Working with GCC, Salisbury Cathedral now operates in the cloud with Microsoft 365 for email, productivity applications, Windows Server, virtual servers, and file storage.

Creating this environment was taken in small, gradual phases to suit Salisbury Cathedral’s needs, which has “brought Salisbury Cathedral into the 21st century – there’s no compatibility issues anymore or systems going down. I’ve no doubt that everyone is much happier!” Richard Gurd, Finance & IT Strategy Lead, Salisbury Cathedral.

  • Challenge

    >  The IT infrastructure at Salisbury Cathedral was nearing end of life and unable to support the Cathedral’s strategic direction.

    >  Employees were limited by slow machines and the challenge of working with different versions of software.

    >  There was also a concern on the security of Salisbury Cathedral’s environment – users accessing from multiple devices, and locations with no uniformed control.

    >  As a charity and donation-funded organistaion, Salisbury Cathedral didn’t have the luxury of rolling out a single, all-encompassing IT refresh programme.

    >  Budget constraints meant that upgrades to the environment had to be taken in small, gradual phases but without causing further disruption.

  • Solution

    GCC worked with Salisbury Cathedral carrying out a strategic IT review – presenting an approach to reduce cost and maximise resources whilst still providing the team with the most advanced IT tools available.

    Salisbury Cathedral moved to:

    >  Operating in the cloud with Microsoft 365 for email and productivity applications

    >  Windows Server and 2 virtual servers for a SQL Server

    >  Microsoft Intune (Mobile Device Management & Mobile Application Management)

    >  File storage

    GCC are providing Salisbury Cathedral with a comprehensive support service for desktops, devices, network, and servers which includes remote maintenance and helpdesk support.

  • Result

    >  For the first time, the Cathedral’s staff are able to access their information from anywhere, with secure, reliable cloud connectivity.

    >  Combined with regular patching from GCC’s support desk Salisbury Cathedral has access to real-time status updates, removing any business disruption.

    >  Being aware of Salisbury Cathedrals budget constraints GCC implemented a flexible ‘per user, per month’ payment model, giving the Cathedral complete control over how quickly they grow and how much they invest – whilst still being able to adopt new technologies

    “The system is not only robust it helps us be very responsive. If there are early warning signals of a potential systems issue, we know immediately and we can get it resolved from any location.  We just couldn’t have done that before.”
    Richard Gurd, Finance & IT Strategy Lead, Salisbury Cathedral.

Organisation details

Organisation:

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL

Industry:

NOT-FOR-PROFIT

Turnover:

£2 MILLION

No of Employees:

60

No of Sites/Offices:

1

Location:

SALISBURY

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The GCC support service provided to Salisbury Cathedral includes the following benefits:

A helpdesk staffed by highly trained, accredited, and experienced IT professionals

Pro-active remote management and monitoring

Additional security through regular patching

Remote assistance – no in-house resources are needed at Salisbury Cathedral

Online portal access – incident logging, tracking & management

Online portal access – FAQs, latest news, and user training

 

Microsoft cloud technologies have enabled us to move forward much quicker than planned and jump to new technologies which we couldn’t have afforded before. We can now all work easily from home and from pretty much any device.

We have greater information security and a robust system that will underpin our future growth.

Microsoft and GCC has made that all possible.

Richard Gurd, Finance & IT Strategy Lead

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