Learning a valuable lesson – how Circular Head Christian School’s ICT team became more efficient with ASI’s Managed Infrastructure Service

Overview

Circular Head Christian School provides education from Early Learning to Year 12 for 300 students in Smithton, north-west Tasmania. Despite having been in existence for 40 years, the school has a very modern approach when it comes to technology.

They have invested in infrastructure including servers, network, desktops and printers; automated many processes; and every pupil in the school has a Chromebook and uses Google Classroom.

Challenge

Until recently, the school had a strong ICT team to support these investments. However, within a short space of time, changes within the team meant that the school lost many years of IT experience and expertise.

Damien Heres, who had been part of the ICT team 15 years previously, returned as ICT coordinator and the school also hired a junior technician.

But as Damien explains: ‘The two of us still could not keep on top of everything that was required. Whilst the school had worked around and innovated in the use of technology within resource constraints, this was heavily reliant on the knowledge and troubleshooting capability of those who had set it up. Simplifying and consolidating the system for ease of management was a high priority.’

Solution

It was a discussion with ASI that opened the door to the solution. ‘I had got to know the ASI team in Tasmania’, says Damien, ‘and shared with them some of the challenges we were facing. They offered us an infrastructure assessment, to review what was currently in place, identify the shortfalls and determine whether ASI could help by managing the infrastructure on the school’s behalf. The school business manager and I were so impressed with the process and the report that we decided to engage ASI for a full Infrastructure Managed Service.’

ASI helped the school to deploy a refreshed staff laptop fleet of 42 devices, using Microsoft InTune, which is now used for all Windows devices.

Another high priority was backups. ASI redesigned the approach to include an offsite as well as onsite backup, and took on the management of the entire process.

With the infrastructure up to date and rationalised, ASI took over the day-to-day monitoring of the servers. Using ASI’s smart automation monitoring tools, any issues are flagged as soon as they occur and ASI calls Damien to rectify them.

Results

Damien could not be happier with the way that the school’s ICT is now handled.

‘In our previous environment, we needed multiple products to manage our infrastructure, but now we use Aruba Central – it gives us a single pane of glass for managing the Wi-Fi and all devices.’

With a team of just two, managing leave was always difficult. ‘Now, if I am away’, says Damien, I can relax knowing that the school is still fully supported.’

‘But the very best thing, from my point of view’ , he continues, ‘is that with ASI doing the day to day management of the infrastructure, I am free to focus on teacher and classroom support. The feedback from teaching staff and the senior management team is that they are getting the support they need in order to create the best learning outcomes for students.’

‘The added bonus’, he adds, ‘is that if we come up against any technical difficulty, even if not strictly within ASI’s remit, we can call them. For example, we had a power failure, and went to ASI for help with troubleshooting.

Some of the key outcomes include: