| Artist and project management company | |
| Business | The Company, based in
London manage artists and has a portfolio of over 70
internationally recognised, conductors,
instrumentalists and singers. The Company is also involved in the organisation of tours for
national and international orchestras. There is also a public
relation company specialising in promoting all sectors
of the arts from classical music, ballet and
opera to festivals, visual arts, contemporary
dance, jazz and world music.
Existing computer systems included a 40 user network spread across two buildings within close proximity, running under the Novell network operating system and supporting a bespoke artist management and scheduling system, ACT CRM, Sun Account ledgers, Microsoft Office applications and internal and external e-mail. The nature of the business means that artist managers travel extensively and therefore require remote access via their laptop computers to the centralised system to enquire on the various applications and pick up their e-mail. The existing infrastructure had grown with additional facilities and new communication requirements being added on an ad-hoc basis, unfortunately these additional facilities had been added without sufficient thought as to whether the basic infrastructure could support the new requirements. There were many reliability problems which were due to the relatively low specification of certain parts of the basic network infrastructure and the increasing requirement of new application software to run on high specification hardware. |
| Size | £3m turnover, 40+ staff, 2 offices in London and up to 16 remote users. |
| Functions | Artist management, scheduling and commission invoicing, contact management, office productivity, internal and external e-mail, Internet access. |
| Projects | Review current infrastructure and to outline an appropriate IT strategy including making recommendations on what changes are required to improve operational efficiency. Define requirements for a new infrastructure and identify and select an appropriate supplier who can install and set up an appropriate hardware and communications infrastructure. |
| Issues | Ageing infrastructure
- An upgraded
infrastructure was required capable of
supporting future information technology requirements.
Simplified infrastructure - The current infrastructure needed simplifying which would rectify some of the network and communication problems being experienced. Improved communications - The Company wanted to develop their use of IT especially in the area of communications to better support remote working, access to the Internet, fax from the desktop, plus other innovative IT applications. Old e-mail system - The current e-mail system, Microsoft Mail needed replacement. Bespoke applications - The main operational system was bespoke and in need of replacement. Internet access - All users needed to be provided with Internet access. |
| Outcome | An IT strategy was defined involving the implementation of an entirely new infrastructure. The requirements for the new infrastructure were documented and issued to a number of potential suppliers. The chosen supplier installed a new network and a virtual private network was implemented allowing users anywhere in the world to access the London based system via the Internet. |
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