Windows 10 evergreen service for a digital organization

Client

The Ealing Council is a local government authority that serves London's third largest borough covering part of West London and a part of North West London. The council provides different services, from disposing of abandoned cars to running a zoo. It has 70+ sites managed by 3,000+ employees.

Business Goal

The Ealing Council has ~ 3000+ Windows 10 devices for which the support engineers were a shared resource responsible for other areas of ICT work. The support was therefore non-optimal. In addition, there were different versions of hardware – making testing on each essential to ensure there were no variances in output. The council needed dedicated support to manage the OS image/SCCM, keep devices compliant and ensure data integrity.

Microland Solution

Microland set up an off shore fully-managed and highly skilled Windows 10 Evergreen Service. The Microland team conducted a review and hand over session with the existing support team. It then prepared a list of best practices and conducted an audit to see how many of them were in place. Areas were marked for improvement (along with a tracker) and change controls were put in place. Some of the key actions that were implemented included:

• SCCM tool upgrade
• SCCM client software upgrade
• Latest software versions deployed
• Reporting services established
• Patches updated
• OSD task sequence designed and optimized

Business Outcomes

Post the upgrade, the client performed tests on all the Line of Business applications. No issues were reported from the new image. All group policies were updated to reflect security requirements based on the client’s needs. The key benefits delivered to the Ealing Council included:

• Hardened Windows 10 image with MS compliance guidelines and UK National Cyber Security Centre’s End User Device (EUD) security guidance
• Enhanced user experience (scores of 5/5)
• Ability to leverage the latest technologies (Direct Access/Office 365) for mobile access
• Secure PSN compliant environment