About Clarke Facades
At a glance
Clarke Facade’s office move presented them with a real challenge. Ionic helped the company to minimise disruption and to use the opportunity to update their systems.
The background
Clarke Facades has provided flooring and finishes for major construction projects throughout the UK and Ireland for over three decades.
Their consistent growth prompted the company to relocate to more expansive headquarters, and the move happened to coincide with the strict new GDPR regulations coming into force. This combination compelled the business to engage Ionic to review their systems and processes, upgrade where necessary, and to manage the move of their IT and comms systems.
Meeting the challenge
After analysing the company’s existing infrastructure, we planned the move in detail before identifying ways to overhaul their IT environment to support growth and to achieve GDPR compliance.
The first step was to install a high-performance firewall to provide a robust, secure platform for all internal and external access. To this we added new spam protection – an essential defence for their email system as the company had previously fought ‘phishing’ and ‘whaling’ attacks. We also installed and implemented Two Factor Authentication to repel unauthorised access to Office 365. All of this underpins the company’s GDPR compliance measures and significantly decreases their IT vulnerabilities.
Our network modifications increased capacity, amplified speeds and boosted fault tolerance. To further improve office efficiency, we also installed a cloud-based phone system after preparing the groundwork to support it.
When moving day arrived, we took Clarke Facade’s entire network including servers, PCs and Printers to the new site and set up all the new workstations over the course of a weekend.
Ionic’s solutions at a glance
- Multi-tiered IT security strategy
- New switching infrastructure
- Fortinet firewall
- Proofpoint spam protection
- Microsoft 2FA
- Cisco 10GB & 1GB network switching
- POE functionality
- Weekend move to minimise disruption
The Result
Thanks to Ionic’s expert planning and weekend move, Clarke Facades was able to hit the ground running on Monday.
Their new system is now fortified against IT threats, and their firewall and network upgrade combine to provide fast and secure access via wired and wireless connections. The BT Cloud Voice system gives all users clear and reliable communications, increasing productivity and work satisfaction.
Clarke Facades’ upgraded systems now support their business growth – their new and improved facilities provide them with the performance they need. Our ongoing management services provide them with the reassurance of knowing that we’ll always be on hand to resolve any issue that crops up, no matter how small or complex, enabling them to focus on the bigger picture and the future.