Case Studies

Our data centre infrastructure needed a refresh and so we reached out to our account manager at AMC, Tom.  Their in-house technical team took the time to understand our business and technical requirements before working with us to design a fit for purpose and cost-effective solution.

AMC utilised the resource available from HPE to design a HPE Nimble storage dHCI solution.  Their customer first approach enabled us to price and build a solution that exceeded our expectations.

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI (disaggregated hyperconverged infrastructure) provides us with the flexibility to scale storage and compute independently, making it ideal for mission-critical workloads. HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is a Converged System built on HPE Infosight and integrated VM management which makes it simple to manage and can scale rack-to-apps in minutes

We will be using AMC for our disaster recovery project later this year.

We have been working with Diana and the team at AMC since 2010. With the support and quality products they have supplied, they have enabled us to continuously develop the IT services at Buckfast, in-keeping with current trends and requirements. AMC have never failed to source even the most obscure equipment we require, as well as generic off the shelf hardware and software.

We look forward to continuing the wonderful working relationship that we have had with Diana and AMC for many years to come. We highly recommend them as a supplier of high quality and reliable IT hardware and infrastructure.

Lancaster and Morecambe College are a further education college.

Looking to replace aging network infrastructure which is hard to manage with multiple vendors and no centralised cloud management or monitoring.  The scope was to replace all their core and edge switching across the site.

Also, the customer has very few internal resources with only a couple of networking guys within the college. Making it hard to manage and monitor a very large site with a lot of users.

AMC scoped out the customer’s requirements for the network refresh tender over a period of over 6 months. Having several meetings with the customer to gather information needed to build out a suitable solution to last the college for many years.

The solution AMC provided was for over 100 switches across the site, covering all core, distribution, and edge switching required. The solution had centralised cloud management for all switching allowing the customer to monitor and manage all switching remotely from a single pane of glass. This has made the customer’s life so much easier being able to configure switching quickly remotely, and monitoring their switching remotely so can easily diagnose issues across their large site.

Due to massive constraints on the networking kit from the vendor AMC had to come to the site to install and configure the switching in the evenings and weekends to meet the deadline for the customer for everything to be set up before the start of term. We had to do out-of-hours to have minimal disruption to the college.

The customer now has a full network from the same vendor with everything cloud managed from a single pane of glass making day-to-day operations for them simple.

AMC also gave training to the internal IT team to complete the project.

Also following on from the completion of the project Lancaster are now under a 5 year support contract with AMC for the networking infrastructure. So now customer has the piece of mind if they have any issues or need any advice on their new network can reach out to AMC to help which quick guaranteed SLAs in place for assistance.

Stonyhurst College is a co-educational Roman Catholic independent school in Lancashire, England. It is the largest Catholic boarding school in the UK, with 800 pupils ranging between the ages of 3 and 18 from over 40 countries.

Stonyhurst needed to equip students and teachers with laptops to bolster the everyday learning experience and empower students to work anywhere. They also needed secure storage for the devices as well as charging in the storage and a charging solution in the classrooms. Due to the time constraints of this project, they also needed imaging set up of all the devices as didn’t have the internal resource to set up the devices in the timeframes needed.

Working with AMC, the college trialled high-spec touchscreen devices capable of managing heavy processing apps for in-class learning such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and Sibelius. It also needed laptops with long lasting battery power, capable of powering these applications all day long. This was alongside withstanding every-day bumps and drops and being lightweight to carry for extended periods of time. Additionally, teachers found themselves spending large amounts of time marking work and hoped implementing school-wide laptop use would streamline this process and increase overall efficiency. On top of this criteria, the devices needed to be built and ready within just two months in time for the start of term in September.

AMC also had custom built trails arranged for different models of charging storage lockers.

Sourcing a large-scale order during a period where there were many constraints on components due to ongoing supply chain issues across the industry presented an extra challenge for Stonyhurst. Multiple providers were struggling to secure the required parts for the 750 units required by the desired deadline. AMC proved to be the perfect partner for Stonyhurst to appoint as its provider of the devices, delivering the large order in time for the new school year in just six weeks, critical to the success of the initial trial phase.

The units were customised to meet each of its desired specifications. This differed for both students and staff, right down to the disc size, memory, and processor. On arrival, AMC setup the units ensuring all the devices were ready for use with the correct applications and security software straight out of the box. This set up of 750 of devices was done in just a few days with people working around the clock to make sure the devices arrived for start of term which was key to the customer.

AMC’s hands-on approach throughout the entire process, including visits to the college, ensured that Stonyhurst were kept up to date with the progress of the devices and its requirements were perfectly met and implemented into everyday school life seamlessly. From specification, it took just six weeks for all units to be successfully delivered, each of which was set-up and ready for students to simply switch on and use. Every student that required a laptop had a device ready to go, right in time for the beginning of term.

AMC also supplied suitable laptop lockers within the college, providing additional peace-of-mind around the security of the devices. Some lockers had RFID locks to integrate into the school current RFID Set up, with others have code lockers to keep costs down to meet customer budgets.

AMC also recommended USB-C charging hubs for the devices for all classrooms in the college as well suitable stylus pens best for the teaching and learning experience for all students and staff.

Finally AMC provided a finance solution for all devices to complete the 1:1 device scheme the college provided to students.

Following the success of this project, Stonyhurst has placed a further order for 300 additional laptops to ensure the rest of its staff are using the very best devices and are empowered in their everyday work. Now every pupil and employee at Stonyhurst is using a laptop AMC have supplied across the college. And have also provided further storage and co-termed in future purchases in line with existing finance agreements.

Gareth Entwhistle, Director of IT Operations at Stonyhurst, said “Technology has revolutionised the education sector, making it increasingly clear that we needed to empower students with their own devices. However, ensuring these delivered on our specific requirements in the time needed was critical. AMC were great from the off, able to balance all our specifications while also providing quick and considered customer service. A year since its implementation, the 1:1 device scheme has delivered impressive improvements to the in-class learning experience for both students and teachers. For example, teachers are now able to provide verbal feedback to every pupil via voice notes on the devices – a personalised and streamlined experience that would never have been possible before. With the strength and reliability of AMC we’ve seen first-hand, we can trust them deliver whatever is needed for the college in the future.

Nick Bonnett, Technical Director at AMC, said, “The execution of this project with Stonyhurst College has exemplified the outstanding outcomes we can deliver when faced with close deadlines and supply chain issues. It’s been great to bring together our partnerships to help Stonyhurst deliver a successful school-wide implementation project.

We approached AMC with the need to standardise our backups for all the schools within our trust. We advised AMC that we were looking for something robust, reliable and highly supportable. The schools used a range of solutions, some local backups only and some cloud backups only.

One of our schools already used ‘Veeam Backup and Replication’, and as this was a product we were happy with, we asked AMC to help us adapt this solution across all sites. They identified that we would need to purchase back up servers, as well as exploring options such as cloud storage and then ensuring the software was set up in line with Veeam’s best practice.

AMC’s hardware and software quotes were very competitive, plus our account manager Lewis was always on hand to deal with our queries. He set up calls and introductions with Veeam and handled the configuration arrangements.

Lewis was happy to go the extra mile in assisting me and delivered costings and helped me build a presentable case to gain stake holder buy in.

We are very happy with AMC and look forward to working with them again soon.