Case studies

Primesight

Leading Outdoor Media Owner benefits from Admiral IT support.

Primesight is one of the leading Outdoor Media Owners, with interests in Roadside 6 Sheets, Convenience 6 Sheets, Premium Backlight Billboards, Glasgow Subway and exclusive contracts to advertise in private Health Clubs and multiplex Cinema Foyers. When faced with extensive changes to their IT infrastructure they contacted Admiral IT.

In October 2007 Primesight was sold by SMG to GMT Communications, a private equity specialist in the communications arena. Primesight approached Admiral to provide project management and installation of new IT and telephone systems.

The project involved the network design, supply and installation of systems at three sites in the UK; London, Glasgow and Kent. Primesight were to move out of SMG's offices in Glasgow and London to new offices but were keeping approximately sixty of their existing PC’s and some of their servers as well as purchasing new ones. Admiral and Primesight invested a lot of resource in the upfront planning as there were many dependencies and it was important for all parties to understand the critical path.

Admiral IT Solution

In consultation with Primesight the project was planned in two distinct phases, these being managing the migration from SMG’s network and then managing the move from SMG’s offices.

Network Migration

The main servers for the SMG network are held in Glasgow so timing the data transfer was key. Admiral and Primesight placed a great deal of emphasis on the project planning and management; to achieve this a weekly project review meeting was held to keep all parties informed and ensure all deadlines were hit thus making sure any unforeseen events were dealt with and never became a problem. Admiral supplied three servers for the new Primesight network plus another remotely hosted server for disaster recovery, all the hardware was HP Proliant DL 300 series running MS Windows 2003 Server. The servers were configured and tested off-site and were only brought to Primesight’s offices a short time before the migration.

Seamless transition

As Primesight were keeping most of their PC’s every one needed to be rebuilt and configured for the new network, to manage this and to make ongoing support simpler Admiral supplied and configured Ghost Enterprise, this meant that on the day of the migration all the PC’s could be rebuilt in a very short space of time. The data transfer and migration happened over a weekend and all the users were able to work first thing on the Monday morning ensuring that there was no in-hours down-time, critical for a business like Primesight. As Primesight would be completely disconnected from the SMG infrastructure Admiral installed a temporary internet connection and managed the DNS, this meant that the email delivery was seamless and that as soon as the changeover began users were able to receive new emails without interruption.

Successful Outcome

The successful outcome of the project was brought about by careful planning and continuous dialogue with the client as well as excellent technical delivery; due to the project being dependent on office moves there were frequent changes in the time frame. Admiral also liaised with SMG's internal IT staff to make sure things went smoothly. By holding a weekly project review meeting all parties were fully aware of what was involved and this meant that when changes were required they could be incorporated without disruption.

Admiral IT

Admiral IT is a Microsoft Gold certified partner, and has expertise across a broad spectrum of IT activities. Admiral's services include network installation and support, project management, move management, disaster recovery, supply of hardware and software and interim support solutions.