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Case Study: Frederick Gibberd Partnership - Office Systems Implementation

Assignment

Frederick Gibberd Partnership are a firm of architects with some 60 staff. The practice is run by 6 partners assisted by associate-led project teams of highly experienced architects and designers. Frederick Gibberd Partnership's objective is to produce well designed buildings of lasting quality, on time and to budget.

Frederick Gibberd approached JADe to implement an enhanced IT infrastructure for approximately 60 staff based in their Central London office. The basic requirements consisted of:-

• improving the contingency of the centralised filesharing & printing
• providing more effective email & internet access
• providing remote access capability for off-site working

Solution

Frederick Gibberd already had an existing IT infrastructure consisting of MS Windows NT servers and a mixture of MS Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP desktops. It was therefore decided that the fundamental basis for enhancing the environment would be based on upgrading the Microsoft technology to current versions. In addition, in order to achieve the required degree of contingency a Dell cluster server solution was implemented to provide a high level of system fail-over.

On the server side, MS Windows 2003 server was implemented for the fileshare & printing on the cluster server and MS Exchange 2003 was implemented as the email server (reusing one of the existing MS Windows NT servers). Finally, a second MS Windows NT server was upgraded to MS Windows 2003 to act as an archive server (for old project documentation).

On the client side, a phased approach has been taken to replacing and / or upgrading the old desktops. It is envisaged that over a period of 12 months all user desktops will be installed with MS Windows XP and MS Office XP.

The central office network was implemented using structured CAT5 cabling over 4 floors. Remote access has been provided using combination of an SDSL connection and a CISCO VPN router.

As part of infrastructure upgrade the following activities were undertaken:-

• Rationalisation and network enabling printers
• Full upgrade of the network infrastructure
• Initial upgrade of dated client workstations with future plan to standardise on Windows XP platform

Result

The main benefits are:-

• A vastly improved & stabilised centralised office systems facility that can be accessed readily by all employees. This provides improved efficiency through shared information within filestores and email system (e.g., global contacts).
• Rationalisation of technologies implemented thereby leading to reduced support effort and cost.

Key Technologies

MS Windows 2003, MS Exchange 2002, MS Windows XP, MS Office XP, CISCO Routers, Sophos Anti-Virus, Veritas Backup