As the country’s leading Architectural ironmonger, Allgood plc has continually driven innovation and quality for over 60 years.

Doing this, whilst maintaining cost effective solutions back to its customers is testament to their continued success. A part of this success, and an integral part in every business today, is the IT infrastructure that supports the day to day operation and line of business applications. For Allgood, this was reaching maximum capacity and in need of a refresh to support the business in new areas and to provide greater control across the remote offices.

Working with risual, Allgood recognised that there is real business benefit and value in centralising the IT operation and consolidating third party applications, opting for a more integrated solution to maximise the investment in Microsoft technology made to date.

The solution which upgraded the Core Directory service to one built on Windows Server 2008 made it possible for centrally delivered applications to be published to remote locations and offices via Terminal Services over low bandwidth links without any loss in performance to the end user.

With e-mail being a critical line of business application to Allgood, the need to allow greater mailbox capacity per user, without creating a future problem for the IT team in the management of bigger user mailboxes was a major procurement factor. With more controlled security and policy provision, the IT department could affect global changes with minimal or no disruption through scheduled and automated updates.

For the final part of the solution, Allgood looked to risual’s Managed Support Services to ensure that all the critical servers and the services they run are available 24 x 365. Managed centrally from their Head Office and Support Centre in Stafford, risual proactively monitor and maintain Allgood’s IT environment, ensuring that the IT systems run as smoothly as the rest of the business, but more importantly, that the investment made is maximised.